DARTS : Degree/Certificate-seeking Students

Degree/certificate-seeking students are defined by IPEDS as students enrolled in courses for credit and recognized by the institution as seeking a degree, certificate, or other formal award. High school students also enrolled in post-secondary courses for credit are not considered degree/certificate-seeking.

In practice, it can be difficult to define students as degree-seeking, or non-degree seeking in the database. The Primary Academic Program (ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY) field is most often used to determine whether a student is degree-seeking. The ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY field may be found in the following database tables in MaineStreet:

BILL_ACADINF_VW - Bill Header Academic Info View

BILL_HEADER_VW - Billing Invoice Header View

BI_BILL_HEADER - Billing Invoice Header

BUS_UNIT_FA_VW - Business Unit for Awards

CLASS_ROSTER_VW - Class Roster On-Line View

FAN_FA_TERM_VW - Student Fin Aid Term View

SFASTDTRMBDGTVW - Student Term Budget

STDNT_CAR_PLNVW - Student Career Term/Plan View

STDNT_CAR_TERM - Student Career Term Table

STDNT_CONS_STAT - Student Consolidated Stats

STDNT_FA_TERM - Student Fin Aid Term Table

STDNT_FA_TRM_VW - Student Fin Aid Term View

STDNT_TERM_BDGT - Student Term Budget

STDNT_TRM_LDLVW

UM_DSTNCE_ED_VW

UM_MULT_INST_VW

UM_MULT_I_CURVW

UM_RETENTION_FS

UM_STUD_CENSUS - Student Reporting Extract Arch

UM_STUD_CENS_VW - Student Reporting Extract

UM_STUD_EXTRACT - Student Reporting Extract

UM_STUD_EXT_ARC - Student Reporting Extract Arch

UM_STUD_EXT_VW - Student Reporting Extract

UM_STUD_EX_OARC - Student Reporting Extract Arch

UM_STUD_UNDUP2 - Student Reporting Extract Arch

UM_STUD_UNDUP3 - Student Reporting Extract Arch

8/3/20 NOTE: the code below is out of date. Please use Degree/Non-Degree Coding - Current.
A common set of SQL code used at the UMS Office to determine degree or non-degree status is the following:

DEGREE_NON-DEGREE

CASE 
WHEN ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY LIKE '%UN' THEN 'Non-Degree'
WHEN ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY LIKE'%GN' THEN 'Non-Degree'
WHEN ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY LIKE '%PN' THEN 'Non-Degree'
WHEN ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY LIKE '%EU' THEN 'Non-Degree' 
WHEN ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY = 'NDUG' THEN 'Non-Degree'
WHEN ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY = 'NDGR' THEN 'Non-Degree'
WHEN ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY = 'NDPR' THEN 'Non-Degree'
WHEN ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY = 'DIST' THEN 'Non-Degree'
WHEN ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY = 'P-NON' THEN 'Non-Degree'
WHEN ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY = 'NONCR' THEN 'Non-Degree'
WHEN ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY = 'GRNON' THEN 'Non-Degree'
ELSE 'Degree' END

Alternatively, in PSQuery, the ACAD_PROG_PRIMARY field can have criteria added to make sure certain terms are 'not in list' ('NDUG','NDUN','NDGR','P-NON','NDGN','GRADNON'). For more information that combines degree-seeking status with student level logic and degree level, please see the article titled student level.

Limitations

Circumstances may arise where the definitions provided by the code do not fit the actual situation at the campus. In such scenarios, institutional researchers and those in data intensive roles may help develop solutions for the community of data users.

You can help improve this page by adding other ways of defining degree/certificate-seeking students, expanding information related to limitations, or contributing other sections to the page!