Ellucian Degree Works

Degree Works brings curriculum audits and academic planning into a shared advising workflow. It is best suited to colleges and universities whose students, advisors, planners, and transfer staff need to coordinate around institutional requirements. Its value rests on turning progress checks into next steps; its deployment and cost call for institutional scrutiny.

Overview

Degree Works uses course, program, and academic data to produce detailed degree audits and manually administered plans. Students and advisors can revise those plans when circumstances change, while what-if scenarios help students consider how a major change or course withdrawal could affect their completion timeline. This is a useful distinction from a progress view alone: the audit can lead into a plan that reflects a changed path.

Institutions can build templated pathways for programs with prescribed sequences of courses and labs. Reporting can show how courses apply to requirements, which students are not following plans, what courses are missing, and aggregated information that can inform future term offerings. That gives planners a view across both individual student progress and course demand.

Key features

Audits and plans: Students and advisors can turn an audit into a manageable plan. That suits advising teams that need to respond to changing academic circumstances rather than treating the original course path as fixed.

What-if scenarios: Students can explore the potential effect of switching majors or withdrawing from a class on their completion timeline. This supports informed advising conversations, though it is not a substitute for an approved academic plan.

Transfer credit: Degree Works maps credits between institutions and shows how prior coursework applies to requirements. The optional Degree Works Transfer Equivalency component evaluates outside coursework to help prospective transfer students understand which credits may be accepted.

Student workspace: Degree Progress and Academic Plan cards present progress in a personalized Ellucian Experience workspace, giving students a place to view both status and planning.

Alerts and interventions: Early alerts are part of the product capabilities, and advisors can receive automatic alerts when students fall behind completion requirements when Degree Works is used with Ellucian CRM Advise. Institutions should account for that stated dependency when considering alerts.

Integrations and approvals: Ellucian describes out-of-the-box ERP/SIS integrations through open APIs and extensibility tools, and a separate planner brief describes Banner Workflow integration for plan approvals. Ellucian says Degree Works can integrate with virtually any student information system, making fit with a particular institutional stack a key implementation consideration.

Pricing

Degree Works is paid, with custom pricing. Ellucian says its pricing is based on full-time equivalent students rather than application-user count, and that the methodology is commercially confidential. This basis may suit institutions whose advising reach varies widely, but it does not offer a published per-seat price for budgeting; institutions should request a quote against their enrollment and system scope.

The Degree Works plan has no published price or stated seat quota, trial period, or renewal term. Pricing is commercially confidential, so prospective buyers should establish the complete subscription and implementation terms directly with Ellucian.

Platforms

Degree Works is described as SaaS-enabled and mobile-friendly, with mobile access and web availability; its listed platforms also include Android, iOS, Linux, and API. An operational environment document specifies an Intel x86 Linux server and warns that other hardware environments or substituted software may be unsupported. Because that document is dated March 16, 2020, institutions should confirm current environment requirements before committing to a deployment.

Ellucian says its cloud services are ISO 27001:2022 certified and that customers can request SOC 1, SOC 2 Type II, and SOC 3 reports. It describes SaaS security as shared responsibility: Ellucian takes on more security tasks as customers move to SaaS, but not all of them. Security feature sheets covering Degree Works are available by request through the Trust Center. Institutions should assess their own responsibilities as well as the assurances relevant to their cloud arrangement.

Who it's for

Degree Works is aimed at higher-education institutions coordinating students and advisors around degree requirements, with additional value for academic planners and transfer staff. It is particularly suited to structured programs that can use templated pathways and to institutions that need reporting on missing courses and students diverging from plans. Institutions seeking only an individual student planner, without an institutional audit and advising workflow, should look elsewhere.

Ellucian's Student Educational Planner service includes a one-week on-site configuration visit and training on templates and end-user use. That support is relevant for institutions planning to establish structured pathways, though the service description does not establish that every Degree Works deployment includes it.

Pros and cons

Pro: Audits can become adaptable plans, so advisors and students can respond to a major change or course withdrawal without losing the planning thread.

Pro: Transfer mapping, optional equivalency evaluation, and student-facing progress cards connect several curriculum questions in one institutional workflow.

Pro: Reporting includes missing courses and aggregate future-term course information, which can inform both individual advising and institutional course planning.

Con: Pricing is confidential and FTE-based, so institutions cannot readily compare a published per-user rate or forecast cost from user count alone.

Con: The operational environment document is dated 2020 and cautions that non-specified hardware or software may be unsupported, creating a need to confirm current deployment requirements.

Con: Automatic alerts are described for use with Ellucian CRM Advise, so institutions must consider that connected product when evaluating the alert workflow.

Alternatives

For a no-cost, self-hosted option, FlightPath offers a free community edition for download and use, but requires a web server, MySQL, and PHP 7.4 or PHP 8.x. Choose it when avoiding a paid subscription matters more than using Degree Works' described institutional workflow.

Slate is a paid admissions and enrollment option, with a listed $30,000 a year license for fewer than 1,500 annual submitted applications. It is the more relevant alternative when the priority is admissions and enrollment rather than degree auditing and academic planning.

Civitas Advising is a paid advising platform with quote-based annual subscription pricing scaled to institution size and scope. It is worth considering when an institution wants to compare a separately scoped advising platform; its cost is also not a fixed published rate.

Consider ConexED Retain as another paid, web-based alternative.

Consider Stellic as another paid option with API and web platforms.

Ellucian Advising is a paid, web-based Ellucian alternative with pricing available by request; compare it when assessing another advising option from the same vendor.

HighPoint Degree Planner is a paid, web-based alternative to consider for degree planning.

Starfish is a paid, web-based alternative with quote-based pricing; it may merit consideration in a vendor comparison.

For broader comparisons, see Academic Advising Software and Degree Audit Software.

Verdict

Choose Degree Works if your institution needs audits that feed into adaptable academic plans, transfer-credit mapping, and reporting across structured curriculum workflows. Its strongest case is the connection between student-level advising and institution-level planning; the reasons to look elsewhere are confidential FTE-based pricing and the need to verify current operating requirements and alert dependencies.