Schools, Departments and Study Programs
The organizational structure is maintained by admins at runtime under Organization in the navigation (/admin/organization). It replaces the former STUDY_PROGRAMS environment variable.
Concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| School | Called faculty at some universities. Has a name, an abbreviation, an optional website and an optional thesis portal (the website students submit their final thesis to). |
| Department | Belongs to exactly one school and cannot be moved to another one. |
| Study program | Belongs to a school (optional). The degree (Bachelor/Master) remains a separate field of the student's profile, so one entry such as Informatics serves both degrees. |
| Research group | Belongs to a school and to one of its departments (both optional). Admins and group admins set them in the research group settings. |
| Thesis | Is assigned to a study program when it is created. Without an explicit choice it takes the study program of its first student that has one. Supervisors can change it on the thesis configuration page. |
Thesis portal link
The link shown to students for the final submission is resolved in this order:
- the thesis portal of the school of the thesis' study program,
- the thesis portal of the school of the thesis' research group,
- the instance default
THESIS_PORTAL_URL(see Configuration).
Only http(s) URLs are accepted for portals and websites.
Deactivating and deleting
Entries that are still used cannot be deleted: a school with departments, study programs or research groups, a department used by a research group, and a study program used by a student or thesis. The application explains this and offers deactivation instead. Deactivated entries disappear from selection lists but stay visible where they are already assigned, so history and existing assignments are kept.
Pre-filling an instance
Set REFERENCE_DATA_PRESET=tum to pre-fill the seven TUM schools with their departments, the thesis portals of the schools that have one and about 50 study programs on the first start. The preset is only applied while no school exists yet: it never overwrites what admins edited and never brings back what they deleted. Study programs that already exist (for example the ones migrated from the former free-text values) keep their name and only receive the school of the preset if they had none.
The tum preset also assigns the school CIT to every research group that has no school yet, because all research groups of the instance existed before schools did. Groups that already have a school are left alone and the department is not guessed, so admins pick the department in the group settings and correct a group that does not belong to CIT.
Migration from STUDY_PROGRAMS
On upgrade, every study program key that a student already has (for example COMPUTER_SCIENCE) becomes a study program entry and the students are linked to it. Existing theses take the study program of their first student. Known keys keep their former label; keys that came from a customised STUDY_PROGRAMS receive a generated name and no school, so complete them under Organization. Study programs that were configured in STUDY_PROGRAMS but that no student has chosen yet are not migrated: create them under Organization or use the preset. The STUDY_PROGRAMS variable is no longer read.
While an instance has no study program at all, the study program is not required in the profile, so students can still apply.