Student Exceptions Overview

Academic programs and departments have delegated authority to grant individual exceptions to a student’s academic plan for major and minor requirements except for the Disciplinary Communication (DC) requirement. Individual exceptions allow a program to manually alter requirement satisfaction in the Degree Progress Report (DPR) by directing a course to satisfy a requirement, changing the requirement, or waiving the requirement altogether. Exceptions to University and General Education requirements must be approved by the Committee on Courses of Instruction (CCI).

DPRs are "coded to the catalog" meaning only courses which appear in the program statement are programmed to satisfy requirements. When students have unarticulated external credit (transfer credit, test credit, UCSC extension credit) or new courses are approved to fulfil requirements, individual exceptions are likely necessary to satisfy requirements for the student.

Types of Exceptions

There are three types of exceptions.

Course Directive: Used to completely or partially fulfill a requirement using a course which is not programmed to complete the requirement. Courses in a course directive must appear on the UCSC transcript, such as courses taken at UCSC, through EAP, and UCDC.

Requirement Change: Used to fulfill part of a requirement using work that does not appear on the UCSC transcript such as transfer credit, test credit, or UCSC extension courses. Is also used to reduce the extent of a requirement (i.e. change from two required courses to one).

Requirement Waiver: Used to fulfill all of a requirement using work that does not appear on the UCSC transcript such as transfer credit, test credit, or UCSC extension courses. Is also used to waive a requirement entirely.

Which Exception to Use?