School Majors

This is an adapted version of an explanation created by Brent Heustess back in 2003. It's been updated to reflect current systems and practices:

Every student has at least one school/major combination.  Both of these codes can be viewed in *ADCODE (School & School major), and the tables are listed to the upper right (AB-TABLES ADSCHOOL(SCHOOL) and NR-TABLES NRSCHMAJ).  More detailed data on school/majors can be viewed in *NRSMAJ's T01 command.  School/major can be programmatically translated using NRN$MAJ2.  NRN$MAJ2 will bring back a text description plus #MAJ-DEPT-ABBR (A3) & #MAJ-DEPT-PREFIX (A2).  #MAJ-DEPT-ABBR is the Course Abbreviation associated with the major.  #MAJ-DEPT-PREFIX is the *DPUSER Prefix associated with the major.  The area of study & *DPUSER prefix mappings to school/majors is not a perfect one.  Some school/majors do not map well to areas of study (such as Undeclared) and some could map to several areas of study.

Students can now have simultaneous (spelled D-U-A-L) majors.  However, every student will have data in at least the base SCHOOL/MAJOR fields.  A student can also have a school/major proposed for a future semester.  When that semester arrives, the proposed school/major will be moved to the base school/major fields.

One function of school/major used to be the distribution of advising material.  That is why most academic departments have an assigned school/major combination.  Some areas use school/major to try to more finely categorize students.  For instance, some departments in the College of Communication use school/major to denote lower- & upper-division status for their students.  Some schools use school/major codes to denote a concentration in a field of study.  However, some areas of study are grouped together under a single school/major code.  Asian Studies is an example of this.  The Asian Studies major code (L12100) includes several areas of studies that offer degrees.

One main use of school/major codes is registration.  Many classes are restricted or give priority to certain school/major codes.  This means that some students will change school/major just to be able to register for certain classes.  They are not not necessarily interested in pursuing a degree in that area, just getting some classes.

This is a key point to make about school/major codes.  They are not a guarantee that a student is pursuing a degree in that area of study.  Many students end up getting a degree in the same area of study as their school/major code but there is nothing in the machinery that grants degrees that makes sure a student has a school/major code that matches the degree/degree-major they are getting.  Degrees are granted because a student had an official degree profile with an proposed semester of graduation.

FILE50 SCHOOL MAJOR FIELDS:

SCHOOL (A1)   & MAJOR (N5)

SCHOOL-2 (A1) & MAJOR-2 (N5)

PROPOSED-SCHOOL (A1)   PROPOSED-MAJOR (N5)   & CCYYS-PROPOSED-MAJOR (N5)

PROPOSED-SCHOOL-2 (A1) PROPOSED-MAJOR-2 (N5) & CCYYS-PROPOSED-MAJOR-2 (N5)