Every graduating class produces them — students who discover missing credits, unmet majors, or overlooked requirements when discovery costs a semester and a visa extension. The rules were published all along. Published is not the same as tracked.
Why seniors get surprised
Degree requirements are a contract written in catalog language — credit points, prerequisite chains, major rules, electives that count and electives that do not. The institution knows each student's true position, but that knowledge lives in systems students do not read and advising sessions students must initiate. The students most at risk initiate least. So progress is assumed on both sides until an audit — typically triggered by an application to graduate — replaces assumption with arithmetic. For international students the arithmetic has a visa attached: an extra semester is not just tuition, it is immigration paperwork, housing, and a family's recalculated plans.
What a living checklist changes
Every requirement, visible per student, marked complete or outstanding, from first semester onward. The Checklist translates catalog language into a list a student can actually read; the Progress Tracker shows advisors which students are tracking and which are drifting toward a final-year surprise. The audit stops being an event and becomes a glance.
Six steps inside SumHubs
You don't have to start from a blank page.
The graduation requirements checklist is a free SumHubs template — mapped to your programs in an afternoon. Request a sample hub to see a degree tracked end to end.