Academic Policy Documentation Template
Three documents and three sheets that check every published policy against the version your committee actually approved.
Free download · No account needed
Publication Check
Every required appearance, verdicted
One row per policy per surface. Four verdicts: match, stale, unapproved, missing.
| Row | Policy | Surface | Approved | Found | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R-1 | — | — | — | — | — |
| R-2 | — | — | — | — | — |
| R-3 | — | — | — | — | — |
| R-4 | — | — | — | — | — |
| R-5 | — | — | — | — | — |
| R-6 | — | — | — | — | — |
| R-7 | — | — | — | — | — |
| R-8 | — | — | — | — | — |
Checks
| Check | What it counts | Value |
|---|---|---|
| CHK-1 | Required appearances that are not a match | — |
| CHK-2 | Verdicts reading unapproved | — |
| CHK-3 | Policies overdue for review and mismatched at once | — |
| CHK-4 | Days behind on the oldest stale verdict | — |
The approved column and the found column are the same policy, read from two different places. The gap between them is the finding.
Every policy manual answers one question: does the policy exist. A checklist stops there, and that is exactly where the finding starts. A policy can exist, be genuinely approved by the right committee, and still be misrepresented on the page a student actually reads, because approval happens once and publication happens on three separate schedules nobody reconciles. The register calls the policy current. The catalog, the website or the handbook can be showing something else entirely, and no single record says which surface is telling the truth.
Oakendell University, a fictional institution built for this pack, carries sixteen academic governance policies across the catalog, the policies website and the student handbook: thirty required appearances. Checking each one against the policy register and the committee's decision log finds twenty-two that match, four stale by 511 to 1,751 days, and two missing from the handbook. Two more, a Title IX grievance procedure and a FERPA policy, were never approved by anyone on record.
Both unapproved policies are also, independently, the two most overdue for their own scheduled committee review. That is the pattern a reviewer finds first: an institution behind on approving a policy and behind on publishing whatever it last approved, at once. NWCCU asks an institution to regularly review its publications for accuracy, and SACSCOC's resource manual treats approval and publication as two separate, cumulative requirements. The register and the check together are what the self-study pack cites as evidence, and the programme review cites the same register for its own committee record.
What's in the pack
Publication Check
One row per policy per surface, verdicted match, stale, unapproved or missing against the register.
Policy Register
Every policy's approved version, approval date and review cycle, so a scheduled review overdue by months surfaces on its own.
Committee Decision Log
The dated record of who approved which version, so a published page can be checked against a real committee decision.
Policy Set
The current policy text by owner and version, the baseline every surface's publication is checked against.
Approval Record Note
What counts as approved, and the two policies whose published text traces to no committee vote at all.
How the Publication Check Is Run
Why stale and unapproved are different failures, and why a verdict has to be dated to mean anything.
How to use it
- 1
Open it in River, or download it
Open the pack in River and let the agent build the register and run the publication check, or download the six blank Word and CSV files with no account.
- 2
Send the policy set and its approval record
Every current policy, its owner, and whatever committee minutes, votes or signed memos exist naming the version that was actually approved and when.
- 3
Read what each surface shows today
The catalog, the policies website and the handbook, read live rather than from memory of what they usually say, since any of the three can change on its own schedule.
- 4
Get every appearance verdicted
Each policy on each surface comes back matched, stale, unapproved or missing, with the days behind or the missing committee record named.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. Download all six files as Word documents and CSV sheets with no signup and no card. Edit with AI is the optional path, where the agent runs the check against your own policy set and committee record. The rest of the packs sit in the template library.
What format are the downloaded files?
Word documents (.docx) for the policy set, the approval record note and the method explainer, and CSV (.csv) for the three sheets, zipped together. They open in Word, Pages, Google Docs, Excel, Numbers and Sheets. In River the same content opens as live Docs and Sheets.
How is a stale verdict different from an unapproved one?
Stale means a committee approved a newer version and a surface has not caught up yet, which is a publishing lag with a real prior approval behind it. Unapproved means the published text matches no version in the decision log at all, current or prior, which is a different and more urgent gap.
Does this decide which policy to approve or how to word it?
No. It reports what the register says was approved and what each surface currently shows, and names the gap between them. Writing or revising the policy text itself, and deciding whether an edited page should be approved as it stands, stays with the committee that owns it.
What if a surface is login-gated or we cannot read it directly?
Say so and mark that row unable to verify rather than carrying forward last cycle's verdict. A verdict with no current date behind it is not evidence a reviewer can use, and guessing what a gated page probably still says is how an edit like the two unapproved cases here goes unnoticed.
How does this relate to a self-study or a programme review?
Both of those cite institutional policy as evidence, and this is what keeps that evidence honest between citations. The accreditation self-study maps criteria to dated exhibits, and the outcome assessment pack collects evidence of student achievement. All three read easier when the policy behind them is current and published where it says it is.
Find the policy your website is publishing without approval
Download the blank pack as Word and CSV files, or open it in River and have the check run against your own policy set and committee record.
Edit with AI