Introduction
In higher learning institutions all over the world, the registrar’s office is accorded the responsibility of a custodian of all the records containing students’ information. In this capacity, the office has varying obligations to several groups including the public, the students, faculties, the members of staff and the respective institution. The registrar’s office must always ensure that it dispenses its duties through compliance with the existing regulations and policies within the institutions they are serving. The office must also conform to the statutory and national regulations and other set standards of the higher education (Specht, 2015).
The Mission, Vision, and Goals of the Registrar's Office
The Office of the Registrar is fully committed to ensuring and sustaining privacy, accuracy and even the reliability of all the students' records; to uphold compliance with the regulations governing the institutions. Its vision is to be completely responsible for all the needs that may affect the faculties, external partners, current and past students and the staff. The office also offers services which are student-oriented in different areas of lesson scheduling, reporting, registration and upholding the confidentiality and reliability of the academic documentations. The office also looks forward to offering both logistical and managerial support for all the academic programs on offer by the respective institution (Reynolds, 2009).
The office of the registrar will therefore persistently offer adequate and highly rated client service to the alumni, employees, faculty and the public among other partners. The decisions made by the office are to be designed in such a way that the students easily grasp necessary experiences (Specht, 2015).
The goals of the office of the registrar include;
Studying the application of web and mobile apps to offer the students with easier and cheaper access to information.
Collaborating and integrating different services within the subdivisions to ensure a well sustained one-stop site for students to seek any necessary help.
Continuing to image effectively documents to enable effective archiving, mainly to control the use the ever-limited space within the office.
Consistently assessing the services offered to the students regarding their academic records, this is to enable them to ensure they meet the needs of the students and seek out ways in which they can improve their services even further.
Participating in beneficial projects which ensure improvements are made within their competency circles to support the efforts put forth by their respective institutions in improving the enrollment procedures.
The History of the Registrar’s Office
The office of the registrar came about due to the earlier need to develop an efficient office which will be responsible for all the authentication and recording of student's academic records. In the past, higher learning institutions were forced to produce and even validate the programs offered, however, they, later on, proceeded to record and authenticate the relevant programs in transcripts. To effectively produce the authentic and current transcripts, the university administrations in those times needed to follow up on class registers and then grades. Someone in a senior position within the department was often assigned the duty, and the responsibility of following up the student's records was therefore left for them (Kisling, 2016).
The changing of these institutions over time ensured a considerable increase in the scope, complexity and size of the universities. This, therefore, called for more specialized staff and offices to carry out such important activities within the universities. Little by little, fields like the students' affairs sprung up, although the respective departments were completely responsible for being concerned and involved in the welfare of the students. After some time, these duties were handed over to educated individuals who demonstrated talents in leadership (Reynolds, 2009).
An issue influencing office functions is their movement from a direct association with the faculties, thus decentralization in many universities, to be mainly clerical in nature. The students’ information is handed in during admissions and class registers are carefully prepared and maintained. After the students’ grades are handed in, the office produces the transcripts which are later in reviewed before the office can ascertain that a particular student has indeed fulfilled all the requirements necessary and therefore qualifies for a degree. These procedures are of high complexity, mainly due to their clerical nature. To make matters easier, there emerged several innovations which enabled software systems to perform almost all the clerical obligations (Specht, 2015). Due to the increased complexity of managing these systems, it was therefore necessary that a more specialized office be created.
Roles of the Registrar Office
With the introduction and use of the new technological solutions present in the contemporary world, a chance is therefore offered to improve and redefine the responsibilities of the office of the Registrar. Moreover, these technological solutions have enabled staff professionalization, affecting their responsibilities, since they are now required to serve a wider institutional purpose and the students' academic progresses. The registrar staffs are well trained to track all the necessary registration records and also apply it consciously for advising, understanding consequences and also assisting both the parents and the lecturers understand and evaluate the right directions to lead their children. Moreover, the staff should be able to manipulate the records in a manner that they can be used to implement and interpret different policies within the institutions.
Technological solutions have increased greatly; however, they have not been seen as replacement tools in the office of the registrar, since these innovations also require trained personnel to ensure that they are appropriately handled. After the innovations are implemented in the universities, the staff members are then let free to utilize these solutions for improved integration, data, and even service delivery. The staffs are equally equipped to associate with other professionals and technological solutions within the department to improve the delivery procedures and ultimate improvements of academic performances.
One of the roles of the registrar’s office is to form meaningful and beneficial collaborations with stakeholders and other external or internal clients. Through the use of strategic collaborations to handle specific programs and issues, the office is better equipped to achieve their objectives and goals. The office is also faced with a responsibility of building key associations with their counterparts from other higher learning institutions; this step will enable them collect any useful administrative information and also make comparisons to locate their exact weaknesses. These relationships additionally enable them to form discussion groups covering very important issues relating to policies and technology (Specht, 2015).
Secondly, the office of the registrar is best depicted in the enhancement as well as delivery of the programs offered in the higher learning institutions. Since the registrar staffs can accurately and consistently track a student's record from the commencement to the completions of their programs, they are aware of the major issues affecting students in their learning; they can, therefore, provide insights to the various departments concerning the university program structures.
Moreover, the registrar office is the core player playing important functions in respect to SEM organizations in different universities. The office of the registrar is better equipped for this task since it holds the relevant data required to necessitate such projects. The registrar staff is also well prepared to use the information in their capacity since they can view it from a desirable perspective, something that can be driven by beneficial partnerships (Kisling, 2016). Nevertheless, for many universities, accomplishing this vast responsibility will necessitate the need for noticeable alterations to the major roles of the employees and the view points of the responsibility by the departments. Such changes may be the only steps required by universities to direct the registrar’s office in playing its significant obligation as per the set enrollment efforts. To ensure a complete reliability and accuracy of the student’s records, the office of the registrar, therefore, operates within the following courses;
Strict adherence to the set deadlines, policies, expectations, and even procedures.
Complete and in-depth disclosure of sets of instructions and guidelines, forms to enable a complete compilation of different procedures within the institution. This, therefore, ensures that the students' and staffs' university online portals are consistently updated, ever comprehensive and completely clear.
Fast and timely responses to different inquiries and proposals made by the students and members of staff. The office's webpage must always be adjusted to alert the constituents regarding important dates like openings, closures, deadlines, timetables, and holidays.
Individual concentration to resolving matters. The office plans to solve problems through personal interactions with the students and staff members and move beyond the use of online automatic responses and handwritten letters.
Administrative Frameworks of the Registrar’s Office
In most countries, the universities operations are regulated by special bodies which ensure that the higher learning institutions make periodic assessments, documentations, and disclosures, which are mostly done annually. The Registrar, who is selected by the Council, is given the huge responsibility of ensuring the university procedures and policies are implemented as per the requirement of the legislative directives. The Registrar reports to the vice chancellor and also manages the central administrative departments within a higher learning institution. The office is further subdivided into sub divisions like the finance section which also answers to the vice chancellor. The office of the registrar is also backed up by junior offices belonging to the deputy registrars, senior and junior assistant registrars, handling different parts of the huge office. The office of the registrar is today made up of divisions managed by the deputy registrars and five subdivisions managed by assistant registrars. These divisions include; the general administration division, students’ affairs division, legal and welfare division, and finally the Relations office (Reynolds, 2009).
Qualifications and Salaries for a University Registrar Position
As mentioned earlier, the registrar is responsible for registrations, class enrollments and other important student’s records. Therefore, due to its complexity and sensitivity, especially in today’s world, a candidate seeking to manage this office must demonstrate an excellent technological expertise. Additionally, a candidate must also be conversant with all the aspects of social work and accounting, with a master’s degree qualification. The candidate must be familiar with the details regarding the practice; therefore, experiences are highly advantageous. The registrars earn very handsome salaries and packages, especially in the US. The average salaries earned by the registrars are approximately over 70,000 dollars. Additionally, due to their hard work as academic administrators, they are also treated to bonuses, vacations, healthcare among other pleasantries. Moreover, the universities may sometimes offer free or cheaper education to any family member of the registrar within the same school. A bachelor’s and master’s degree may be more competitive, accompanied by a vast understanding of the advantages and applications of computer sciences. In most universities, a candidate seeking the office must have atheist five years of experience managing an equivalent position. The registrar must also exhibit good communication skills, physical presentation expertise, decision-making abilities and problem-solving skills (Kisling, 2016). The individual should be able to interact freely with individuals from different social, economic, religious and cultural backgrounds. Additionally, they must be able to maintain relationships with his or her counterparts from several institutions. Finally, he or she must be an organized and clean individual who can swiftly change to the ever changing patterns and give complete attention to minute details.
The Changing Role of the Registrar’s Office
The roles of the registrar's office have evolved in great ways, especially over the past three decades. Three decades ago the responsibilities simply comprised the creation of schedules, students' registration, documentation and distribution of grades to students. In today's generation, the responsibilities are more technologically driven, complex and with broader expectations especially by the internal constituents of the universities. Despite the similarities goals and requirements of this office being the same, to those of the past offices, the office has evolved to become the center of the institutions’ online assessment body. Today, the office employs technology completely in all its areas to conduct course evaluations to accurate and fair degree audits. Therefore, the office has changed to not only be a beneficiary of the information technology, but being an associate who develops academic products and services to the departments, employees, relevant agencies and students (Kisling, 2016).
Moreover, the technological systems have provided efficient methods of manipulating the stored data. This has again changed the roles in a positive way. These days the office of the registrar doesn’t have to wait for long periods of time spend in a manual authentication of the student’s data. These days, the data is fed into software which automatically runs to conduct useful comparisons, analysis and interpretation of students’ grades (Kisling, 2016).
Challenges Facing the Office of the Registrar
In most offices of the registrars in different institutions, states, and cities, there are common challenges with important fields such as human resource, finance and budgeting, and technology. The office is faced with insufficient funds to carry out the ever widening roles changing faster with the contemporary trends. The office also experiences numerous retiring employees due to old age; this becomes a constraint since these employees are well conversant with a particular technological system in use. It is difficult for the office to successfully train a new employee regarding the technology upgrades they employ (Reynolds, 2009). Finally, the office is faced with the challenge of adopting a new technology into its systems, since it consumes a lot of resources and time to analyze and agree on the demerits, the merits and the feasibility of the innovations with regards to their short-term and long-term goals and objectives.
The Philosophies of the Office
The office of the registrar operates on several philosophies which ensure that all the choices, operations, planning processes are well informed. The philosophies concentrate on employee support in the dissemination of their duties, the identification and timely response to any constraints that the employees or students may face in trying to solve the problems. Additionally, the philosophies also ensure that the office efficiently and reasonably aligns its goals with their main competency circles, conducts metrics to measure the degree of satisfaction demonstrated by the people they serve, to allow them to know if they are indeed going towards the right direction (Lavigne, 2013). Moreover, the office is committed to offering the recommended methodologies to carry out various projects. Additionally, the office works under the philosophies of creating long-lasting associations and appreciation for the contributions of different partners in their achievements. Finally, the office is focused on connecting their job requirements to their strategic plans, ensuring the stored information is efficiently addressed, being financially accountable and fostering healthy and collaborative associations with the divisions to easily achieve its objectives.
Future Strategic Plan of the Registrar’s Office
In the coming future, the office plans to be at the top in service deliveries and support necessary to ensure an accurate collection, management and analysis of students’ data for different programs offered by these higher learning institutions. The office additionally plans to improve the manner in which they review the students' applications to give a bit more considerations of the talents, inspirations, and passions of these students (Lavigne, 2013). The office seeks to manage their duties including scheduling and distribution of grades to completely ensure that the students’ academic records are properly maintained and can be used to analyze their overall performance. The office also plans to determine gifted to performing students who demonstrate high-level diligence and commitment to their studies, and award them scholarships. The office also plans to ensure that needy students continue with their studies uninterrupted by linking them to appropriate bodies that can award them financial grants.
Shortly, the office of the registrar will continue being propelled by reliable and healthy associations, dominated by clear and open communications. These collaborations with the alumni, internal and external stakeholders, students among other constituents will ensure a beneficial interdependence, as have been suggested in different comments, interviews and even discussion forums (Lavigne, 2013).
Conclusion
In summary, the office of the registrar at the universities and colleges is the driving force that connects the students to the various institutions through registration, enrollments, and follow-ups of all the academic activities they are involved in at the institutions. The office is therefore committed to ensuring that the keeping, analysis and distribution of the student’s records with regards to their performances conform to their set regulations. The office also has set goals and objectives and also future strategic plans which concentrate on even better improvements. Therefore, it is evident that the office is one that must be technologically equipped and operated by highly experienced, professionally qualified and dedicated individuals.
References
Kisling., D. (2016). The Strategic Role of the Registrar: Changing Responsibilities in Light of Technology | AACRAO Consulting. Consulting.aacrao.org. Retrieved 11 April 2016, from http://consulting.aacrao.org/publications-events/the-strategic-role-of-the-registrar/
Lavigne, K. (2013). Registrar's Office Strategic Plan. Registrar's Office. Retrieved 11 April 2016, from https://uwaterloo.ca/registrar/about/registrars-office-strategic-plan
Reynolds, M. (2009). Developing a working relationship with the Registrar's Office. Nacada.ksu.edu. Retrieved 11 April 2016, from https://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Clearinghouse/View-Articles/Developing-a-working-relationship-with-the-Registrars-Office.aspx
Specht, N. (2015). Workday Community Voices: An Inside Look at the Modern University Registrar’s Office - Workday Blog. Workday Blog. Retrieved 11 April 2016, from http://blogs.workday.com/workday-community-voices-an-inside-look-at-the-modern-university-registrars-office/
