Improving student home campus data

A student's home campus is in the uhScopedHomeOrg attribute returned by CAS and LDAP. We have recently discovered some issues in our calculation of the home campus, and they will be addressed on 10/30/2018.

These issues only affect the student home campus coming from Banner (dataOrigin=sis); they do not affect affect the home org coming from PeopleSoft (dataOrigin=hris):

Issue #1: was ignoring predetermined home campus change for future terms

A student's home campus in uhScopedHomeOrg was updated only when that student's academic profile data changed in Banner.  This was incomplete because such Banner data could include a range of semesters in the future that specified a different home campus.  In such cases, Banner data may not change, but the home campus might change with the passage of time, as we transition from one semester to another.

There are about 1500 students whose home campus will be changed in uhScopedHomeOrg because of this issue.

Issue #2: some returning students may be missing their home campus data

People who cease to be students lose their home campus in uhScopedHomeOrg. If they return as students, their home campus is restored only if there is an accompanying change to their Banner academic profile data. Apparently, there are valid scenarios where students return without an update to their academic profile records, so from now on, we will always retrieve the most recent academic profile after any student affiliation change.

There are about 550 student home campus values to be added to uhScopedHomeOrg because of this issue.

Issue #3: some inconsistencies between student affiliations and student home campus

It doesn't make sense to have a person with a home campus if that person doesn't have a student affiliation.  It is also unusual for a person to have a student affiliation but not have a home campus.  

These inconsistencies occurred because our calculation of the home campus did not take into account our own algorithm for calculating the applicant/student role.   Further compounding the issue is the fact that calculating the student role from Banner is complicated (see UH Role Assignments and Transitions).  In a nutshell, we aren't able to use Banner to conclusively determine that a person has ceased to be a student. Therefore, we allow people to retain their student roles if they've registered for a course during the preceding Fall or Spring semester.  This basically means that students who have left can retain their student affiliations and their home campus attributes for one extra semester.

To be consistent with our student affiliation computation, the Banner academic profile data that we use to calculate the home campus should therefore not be older than the prior Fall or Spring semester.  At the other end of the spectrum, if a student does not have a home campus applicable for the current semester, we will use the nearest future-term home campus.  This is not as bad as it seems.  Community college applicants are treated as students as soon as they apply, so it is perfectly fine that they have a student affiliation today, but a home campus that begins in the upcoming semester.

Similarly for applicants, it would be OK to use a home campus from Banner that is applicable for the current or for future terms but never one for a past term, even if it was for the preceding Fall or Spring semester.  Note that not all applicants have a home campus.

There are about 4400 people whose home campus will be deleted from uhScopedHomeOrg because of these inconsistencies being fixed.  The breakdown of these 4400 is approximately 3000 ohana, 700 applicants, and 700 faculty/staff.

Final thoughts

Remember that our definition of home campus may not always match your expectations.  For example, some applicants can have a home campus whereas your application may expect a home campus to be defined only for students.   We recommend that you always complement the home campus information with other requirements (for example, by also requiring a student affiliation).

Likewise, our definition of student may not match yours, especially since we let people retain their student roles for an extra semester after their departure.  As we said before, it's complicated, but it's our best approximation for a practical student role that can be used very widely.

If your application needs tighter control, such as requiring that a student be registered for the current semester, you could use uhReleasedGrouping for that.