University of Cincinnati Cleared a 60-Day Transcript Backlog in 10 Days

Every transfer applicant to the University of Cincinnati, a public university with more than 53,000 students, sends a transcript. That transcript has to become data before anyone can tell the student which credits will count.

Two changes hit that work at once. The credit evaluation team moved under the Office of the Registrar, and the Ohio Articulation and Transfer Clearinghouse (ATC) retired. Staff now had to key in transcripts that used to arrive as XML files.

Molly McDermott-Fallon, assistant vice provost and university registrar, calls it a perfect storm. Each transcript took 45 to 60 minutes to process, and the queue grew into a 60-day backlog. "We were behind in processing transcripts for transfer evaluation, and our situation was quickly becoming unsustainable," she says.

The delay reached past her office. Transfer evaluations stretched to 45 to 60 days. Advisors kept telling the registrar that things weren't moving fast enough, and prospective students waited weeks to learn what their credits were worth.

UC didn't start with Parchment. The team evaluated other vendors and began implementing one of them before stepping back. "The lift and the labor was significant and not worth the return on investment, quite frankly," McDermott-Fallon says.

That attempt clarified what UC needed the second time around. McDermott-Fallon says easy integration with UC's existing technology was the critical factor. 

With a backlog in place and peak season two months out, a long ramp also wasn’t an option. "We needed something that was out-of-the-box ready because ... we had a backlog we wanted to clear as soon as possible," she says.

She had worked with Parchment before, but conversations with registrars at other institutions running Data Automation with PeopleSoft settled the decision. "Hearing about Data Automation from other registrars really solidified it for me," she says.

Data Automation reads incoming transcript PDFs and turns them into structured data that loads into an institution's student systems, so staff don’t have to key it in by hand. UC started the Data Automation project 60 days before its peak season, knowing a flood of transcripts was coming. 

"We hit our exact implementation target," McDermott-Fallon says. She describes it as an out-of-the-box implementation, the opposite of the heavy lift UC had walked away from with the earlier vendor.

UC switched the tool on in the middle of peak season, while staff were still learning it. The Parchment team offered continual support through that stretch. "Throughout the process, the support from the Parchment team was—and still is—there," she says. The team answers questions quickly, and McDermott-Fallon says that ongoing support is essential to getting the most from the tool.

Transcript processing at UC dropped from 45 to 60 minutes per transcript to 3.5 minutes. "We turned this on during peak season, and were still getting comfortable with the tool, and still cleared a 60-day backlog within 10 days," McDermott-Fallon says.

Faster data entry gave the team faster answers. Transfer evaluations that took 45 to 60 days now take one to two days. McDermott-Fallon looks to UC's advisors as a measure of how her office is doing, and their feedback has turned around. "Our advisors cannot say enough good things about Data Automation," she says.