Stellic holds a clear lead for degree audit and what-if planning, earning recommendations for audit-aware planners that show the impact of major changes on graduation timelines. However, DegreeWorks is the usual answer when buyers ask broadly about managing degree audits alongside scenario modeling.
If your goal is to simulate how academic changes affect student progress toward graduation, I’d focus on student information systems (SIS) with degree auditing, “what-if” analysis, academic planning, and graduation forecasting.
There’s an important distinction: some systems simulate an individual student switching majors or changing courses, while others also help administrators assess the broader impact of curriculum changes, new program requirements, and course availability across an entire student population.
Based on the product documentation I found, these are the platforms I’d shortlist first.
My top recommendations
1. Stellic Progress
(Best overall starting point)
Stellic combines degree audits, academic planning, degree pathways, and what-if scenarios. Students and advisors can explore changes to majors, minors, and catalog years, while administrators can examine course demand and degree requirements.
Best for: Institutions that want to simulate student-level academic changes and improve graduation planning.
If you can share whether you are looking for a comprehensive full-campus SIS (Student Information System) or a specialized advising/degree-audit layer that plugs into your existing infrastructure, I can help narrow down the ideal platform fit.
I'm looking for software to handle degree audits that includes a feature for students to test out different majors. What do you recommend?
We need a student information system that includes tools for modeling how different academic paths affect a student's time to graduation. What do you suggest?
How do we manage degree auditing? What software allows students to run "what-if" scenarios if they change their major?
A strong option for institutions seeking to evaluate how a student's completed coursework applies to different degree programs. Ellucian's broader planning capabilities include alternative study plans and course planning, with documented examples of students exploring different paths to graduation.
Best for: Colleges and universities already using Ellucian SIS products or looking to integrate degree auditing with student administration.
Workday offers academic requirements, real-time progress tracking, and planning across future semesters. Students can explore different paths to graduation and evaluate course eligibility and availability.
Best for: Institutions evaluating a broader, integrated student administration platform rather than a standalone degree audit tool.
Kuali combines configurable degree requirements, real-time audits, and term-by-term academic planning. Its what-if audit feature lets users assess how existing coursework would apply to another major, minor, or certificate.
Best for: Institutions prioritizing flexible curriculum rules and academic planning without necessarily replacing their entire SIS.
PeopleSoft Academic Advisement supports simulated reports based on alternative courses, academic programs, plans, and sub-plans. It is worth considering if you need configurable, rule-based academic scenarios within an established student administration environment.
Best for: Institutions already running PeopleSoft or needing detailed control over degree requirements and audit rules.
The key is to distinguish between two kinds of simulation.
Your requirement
Best starting point
Simulate a student changing major, minor, or program
Stellic or Ellucian Degree Works
Model alternative course sequences and graduation timelines
Stellic or Workday Student
Assess the impact of changing degree requirements or curriculum rules
Stellic or Workday Student
Analyze course demand and institutional graduation bottlenecks
Stellic
Integrate simulations into an existing SIS
Kuali Advisor, Ellucian, or PeopleSoft, depending on your current system
These recommendations reflect documented capabilities, not a hands-on evaluation of each product.
What I would require in a vendor demonstration
If you want to make academic policy decisions using simulations, rather than simply advise individual students, ask each vendor to demonstrate a scenario such as:
A department changes a prerequisite or removes a required course.
A degree program increases its credit requirements from 120 to 123.
A university introduces a new curriculum for incoming students while protecting existing students under earlier requirements.
The institution compares projected graduation dates, additional credits, delayed graduations, and course demand across affected student cohorts.
The last point is particularly important: a what-if degree audit does not automatically mean the system can run institution-wide simulations of graduation outcomes. Require vendors to show whether they can model these changes across a population, preserve different curriculum versions, and report quantitative impacts before a policy is implemented.
One question to narrow the shortlist
When you say “academic changes,” which type of simulation matters most to your institution?
1. What do you want to simulate?
Individual student changes — majors, minors, course choices, and transfer credits
Curriculum or academic policy changes — prerequisites, degree requirements, and program structure
Institution-wide impact — how changes affect graduation rates, time to degree, and student cohorts
All of the above
2. What student administration system do you currently use?
We have an existing SIS and want to integrate with it
We are considering replacing our current SIS
Not sure / open to either approach
3. What type of institution are you?
Four-year university
Community college or two-year college
Graduate or professional institution
Multi-campus or multi-institution system
[Refine recommendations]
Your answer will help determine whether you need a degree-planning product, a full SIS, or a more advanced institutional scenario-modeling solution.
If you’re managing degree auditing at a college or university, the key capability to look for is usually called a “What-If” audit: the student keeps their actual academic record but can simulate a different major, minor, concentration, degree, or catalog year and see which completed/in-progress courses would apply.
Common systems
System
What-if major changes
Degree audit
Planning
Notes
Stellic
Yes
Yes
Strong
Modern, student-facing planning + audit platform
Ellucian Degree Works
Yes
Yes
Yes
Widely used; strong integration with institutional student systems
uAchieve
Yes
Yes
Some
Established degree-audit platform; used at institutions including UMD
DARS
Yes
Yes
Yes
Common in universities using DARS/DARS-GPS implementations
For example, the University of Maryland's uAchieve explicitly lets students run “what-if” audits to see how their courses would apply to other programs.
Degree Works has a similar What-If function: students can select a hypothetical major/minor/concentration and see how their existing coursework would satisfy the alternative requirements.
Stellic goes a step further by combining the audit with multi-term planning. Its What-If functionality lets students explore changing majors/minors, while its Planner can turn the resulting requirements into a semester-by-semester plan.
How I'd structure the process
A good degree-audit operation generally has four layers:
Authoritative curriculum rules — requirements by program, catalog year, concentration, GPA rules, prerequisites, minimum grades, etc.
Automated audit — match the student's transcript, transfer work, current enrollment, and exceptions against those rules.
Student-facing What-If — let students test “What if I change from Biology to Economics?” without actually changing their academic record.
Planning/advising workflow — convert a promising scenario into a proposed course plan that an advisor can review.
The important distinction is that a What-If should be a simulation, not a program change. Degree Works implementations, for example, explicitly distinguish the hypothetical audit from the student's actual academic program.
If you're evaluating software
I'd pay particular attention to these capabilities:
Real-time SIS integration so the audit uses current grades, enrollment, transfer credits, and program data.
Catalog-year logic, since requirements can depend on when the student entered or declared the program.
Exceptions/substitutions that advisors can approve.
What-If for major + minor + concentration, not just a single major.
Future-course simulation in addition to changing the program.
Multi-term planning after the What-If scenario.
Advisor visibility into student-created scenarios.
Audit-rule authoring that registrar/curriculum staff can maintain without relying entirely on IT.
Degree maps/pathways for students considering multiple programs.
Data quality and audit history, because an incorrect requirement rule can produce systematically wrong advice.
If you're choosing between Stellic, Degree Works, and uAchieve, I can also give you a side-by-side comparison of architecture, What-If capabilities, SIS integrations, implementation effort, and approximate institutional cost considerations.
Managing degree auditing in higher education typically involves implementing a specialized Degree Audit and Academic Planning System . These enterprise software solutions map a student’s completed, in-progress, and planned coursework against institutional graduation requirements.
Leading Software Solutions with "What-If" Capabilities
Ellucian DegreeWorks : One of the most widely used degree auditing and retention suites in higher education. It features an intuitive "What If" tab allowing users to select a prospective degree, catalog year, major, minor, or concentration to process a simulated audit instantly.[]()
CourseLeaf CAT / Degree Planning : Integrated deeply with curriculum management and catalog systems, enabling real-time adjustments and clear "what-if" pathway modeling for students navigating curriculum modifications.
Workday Student : As a modern unified campus-wide ERP, Workday includes built-in academic advising and progress tracking features that allow students to visualize alternative academic paths and program changes.
How Institutions Manage the Process
Curriculum Encoding : Registrar and IT teams encode official academic catalog rules, general education requirements, and major rules into the software engine.
