Ellucian Degree Works

Ellucian Degree Works is an institutional degree-audit and academic-planning system built around curriculum requirements, student progress, and transfer credit. It is best suited to colleges and universities coordinating advising across students, advisors, academic planners, and transfer staff. Its combination of actionable audits and planning makes it a strong fit for structured advising workflows, but institutions should weigh custom pricing and environment requirements before choosing it.

Overview

Degree Works turns course, program, and academic data into detailed audits and manually administered academic plans. Students and advisors can convert an audit into a plan and manage changes such as a major switch or course withdrawal, while what-if scenarios help students see how those choices could affect their completion timeline. This connects requirements to next steps rather than leaving students with a progress checklist alone.

Institutions can also create templatized academic pathways for programs whose students follow a set sequence of courses and labs. Reporting covers course use toward requirements, students who are not following plans, missing courses, and aggregate information that can inform future term offerings. That makes the product relevant not only to individual advising but also to institutional planning.

Key features

• Audits and plans: Degree audits can be converted into plans that students and advisors manage as circumstances change. This is useful when a student’s route shifts, though the plans are described as manually administered.
• What-if planning: Students can explore changes such as switching majors or withdrawing from a class and consider the effect on their completion timeline.
• Alerts and interventions: Degree Works supports early alerts and intervention workflows. Automatic alerts when students fall behind completion requirements are available when it is used with Ellucian CRM Advise.
• Student workspace: Degree Progress and Academic Plan cards display progress in a personalized Ellucian Experience workspace, giving students a view of both status and plans.
• Transfer articulation: The system maps credits across institutions and shows how prior coursework applies to institutional requirements. Optional Degree Works Transfer Equivalency evaluates coursework for prospective transfer students.
• Integrations and approvals: Ellucian describes out-of-the-box ERP/SIS integrations through open APIs and extensibility tools, and integration with Banner Workflow for plan approvals. It says Degree Works can integrate with virtually any student information system.

Pricing

Degree Works: custom pricing. Pricing is based on full-time equivalent students rather than application-user count, so institutions should assess cost against enrollment scale, not just the number of advisors or students accessing the system. The pricing methodology is commercially confidential; no seat quota or trial term is stated.

There are no lower-priced tiers described, so buyers should evaluate the full institutional fit rather than expect a reduced plan with a smaller feature set.

Platforms

Degree Works is described as SaaS-enabled and mobile-friendly, with access anytime and anywhere. Listed platforms include Android, iOS, Linux, web, 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 during procurement.

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. SaaS security is a shared responsibility: Ellucian assumes more security tasks as customers move to SaaS, but not all of them. Application security feature sheets are available by request through its Trust Center.

Who it's for

Degree Works is aimed at higher education institutions that need a shared view of curriculum progress, planning, and transfer credit. It is particularly relevant to institutions with sequenced academic pathways, active transfer workflows, and advisors who need to identify students falling behind. Ellucian’s Student Educational Planner service includes a one-week on-site configuration visit and training on templates and end-user use.

It is less compelling for an individual student seeking a standalone planner or for an institution unwilling to confirm the Linux environment and shared security responsibilities. The institution-wide FTE pricing basis also makes it a procurement decision, not a simple per-user app purchase.

Pros and cons

• Pro: Audits can become changeable plans, helping students and advisors respond to course withdrawals or major changes rather than treating the audit as a static report.
• Pro: Transfer mapping, optional equivalency evaluation, and what-if scenarios address common points of uncertainty in degree progress.
• Pro: Reporting on missing courses, plan adherence, and course use can inform advising and future term offerings.
• Con: Automatic completion-risk alerts depend on using Ellucian CRM Advise, so they are not a standalone Degree Works capability.
• Con: FTE-based custom pricing and commercially confidential methodology make budget comparison less straightforward than user-based pricing.
• Con: The operational document warns that non-Intel x86 Linux environments or substituted software may be unsupported, a meaningful deployment constraint to verify.

Alternatives

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

• FlightPath is the alternative to consider when free, self-hosted web software is the priority; its Community Edition is free to download, install, and use, with a MySQL database and PHP 7.4 or 8.x.
• Civitas Advising is another paid advising option, with an annual institution subscription quoted according to size, scope, and integrated systems.
• Slate may suit institutions evaluating an admissions and enrollment license; its listed tier for fewer than 1,500 annual submitted applications costs $30,000 a year.
• ConexED Retain is another paid web-based option.
• Stellic is another paid option with API and web platforms.
• CoreCampus offers a cloud-based platform with custom pricing based on average annual FTE students.
• Ellucian Advising is another Ellucian web-based paid product with pricing by inquiry.
• Kuali Financials is a paid API and web product priced by inquiry.

Verdict

Institutions seeking to connect degree audits with student-managed plans, transfer-credit information, and advising workflows should put Degree Works on their shortlist. Its strongest case is the path from requirements to actionable planning, supported by institutional reporting. Look elsewhere if you need transparent per-user pricing or cannot accommodate the environment requirements; confirm deployment and security responsibilities before committing.