№ 92

Checking Submitted Documents for Completeness, Accuracy, and Compliance Is Time-Consuming, Error-Prone, and Difficult to Scale

Universities continuously receive large volumes of submitted documents, such as student assignments and theses, internship portfolios, ethics applications, transfer-credit and course-waiver petitions, graduation applications, and course and program documentation for accreditation. Before any substantive evaluation can begin, each submission has to be checked at three levels. The first is basic consistency: are all required documents included, complete, signed, and in the right format? The second is internal consistency: is the information correct and coherent within and across documents, for example whether credit totals match the transcript, names and dates align across forms, or a syllabus's assessments actually map onto its stated learning outcomes? The third is external consistency: does the submission comply with the applicable regulations, curriculum frameworks, policies, and accreditation standards? These checks are mostly done manually by reading documents side by side against checklists and policy texts. Keeping track of what has been received, what is missing, and what is still outstanding is typically handled through spreadsheets and email threads.