# VR University academic operations

Prepared 14 October 2026. Research University is the university system; VR University is its inaugural institutional workspace. Research University Press is its separate publishing division. The VR School and Advanced Authentic Research (AAR) K–12 application remain separate.

This release implements the complete technical journey for a **nondegree** research pathway: actual policy adoption → approved curriculum → private application → independent admission → explicit enrollment → offering-specific work → faculty judgment → independent registrar record → outcome review → private learning record → optional journal submission and consent-controlled verification.

## Start from real institutional records

The public catalog stays empty until real faculty and registrar approvals exist. No fictitious students, qualifications, policy adoptions, courses, programs, grades, completions or institutional compliance findings are seeded. Tests use an isolated synthetic database.

1. Sign in and open `/institutional-review`. Dr. Cheteni's authorized account administers software access; this does not create legal governance or an academic qualification.
2. Registered colleagues can receive separately appointed responsibilities. Faculty, admissions and registrar access require a current independently reviewed appointment/qualification exhibit. A revoked/expired appointment or expired source exhibit removes the relevant access. A faculty colleague can also hold a separately appointed support role.
3. Upload actual legal authority, mission, governance, finance, personnel and policy records as private exhibits. Link the correct criteria and obtain independent source review. Keep student statements and support material out of the institutional room.
4. A quality reviewer independently verifies the exact actual policy-adoption text. Required admission safeguards cover admissions, privacy, assessment, complaints and research integrity. Additional academic freedom, accessibility, retention and research-ethics policies are supported. A URL alone cannot adopt a policy; the actual adoption document must be preserved.

## Offices and permissions

| Appointment | Operational responsibility | Privacy and independence boundary |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Platform administrator | Configure appointments, institutional exhibits and technical integrations | Not automatically faculty, admissions or registrar; cannot substitute for legal governing authority |
| Quality reviewer | Independently review actual institutional source/adoption evidence, operating metrics and improvement records | Cannot approve their own submitted record; does not see student essays, portfolios or support statements by this role alone |
| Faculty | Design courses/programs, assess assigned offering work, advise assigned learners and review program outcomes | No self/coauthor assessment; access covers assigned work, not unrelated learners or institutional finance |
| Admissions | Review submitted university applications, record reasoned decisions and reserve finite cohort seats | Own-application decisions are blocked; private drafts belong to the applicant |
| Registrar | Publish independently approved catalogs, manage intake/offerings, verify course and completion records, route appeals | Cannot self-approve their own proposed or originally assessed course judgment or their own learning record |
| Support | Respond to assigned confidential requests | Only requester and assigned independent colleague see the statement; routing metadata is separate |
| External reviewer | Time-limited, read-only institutional evidence and aggregate operations review | No individual student records, private academic events or confidential support cases |
| Learner | Own application, consent, enrollment, work, feedback, records and exports | No access to another learner; no public sharing unless explicitly authorized |

Academic freedom, ethics review, accessibility, safeguarding, employment and legal authority still require real institutional action. A software role or reviewed upload does not itself establish regulatory status or WSCUC compliance.

## Operate the academic journey

| Stage | Workspace | Actual recorded action |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Course design | `/university/curriculum` | Actual faculty define outcomes, achievement expectations and rubric proficiency; a different appointed faculty colleague approves |
| Program design | `/university/academics` → Programs | Choose exact approved university course versions, sequence/prerequisites, required/elective learning units and deliberate outcome mappings; every program outcome needs a mastery mapping |
| Catalog publication | Academic services → Programs | Separate faculty and registrar approval; actual current adopted policies required; catalog version and SHA-256 preserved |
| Cohorts and delivery | Academic services → Cohorts | Registrar records coherent calendars, finite capacities, qualified advisor and assigned offering instructors |
| Adult university application | `/university/programs` → chosen cohort | Private five-step draft with work links, optional voice dictation and consent-based writing prompts; own authenticated ORCID required before final submission |
| Admissions decision | Academic services → Admissions | Default pending queue prioritizes submitted/waitlisted work; history is separate and paginated. Officer records student-facing reason and offer expiry; active offers reserve capacity |
| Offer acceptance | `/university/student` → Applications | Learner explicitly accepts the exact offer and preserved requirements; admission alone does not enroll someone |
| Course enrollment | Student portal → Courses | Learner selects an available offering in the actual enrolled curriculum; recorded prerequisite passes and finite seats are checked |
| Source work and feedback | `/learn` | Each course offering has its own portfolio and frozen outcomes/rubric; assigned faculty assess the exact revision and preserve source plus actual judgment |
| Final course record | Academic services → Registrar | Different registrar verifies preserved source/judgment and records pass, fail or incomplete; corrections preserve prior records and exact supersession links |
| Advising and completion | Academic services → Advising | Assigned advisor records feedback, next steps and actual program-outcome mastery evidence; a different registrar verifies all qualifying sources before issuing a nondegree record |
| Learner verification | Private learning record | Learner chooses an expiring/revocable capability link; fragment token stays out of request URLs. Limited disclosure excludes essays, contact email, faculty rationale, personal notes and support cases |
| Academic appeal | Student portal → Advising & appeals | Registrar appoints independent faculty reviewer; preserved original source governs review. Remand requires a new preserved assessment and separate registrar approval |
| Publication | Assessed portfolio → chosen journal | Learner explicitly authorizes private manuscript/Paper Agent. Contributors authenticate ORCID and confirm authorship; independent editorial review decides publication |
| Institutional improvement | `/university/operations` and Institutional review | Actual defined progression/mastery aggregates, evidence/appointment currency and measured stored-exhibit checks; improvement closure needs separate reviewed implementation and later-outcome exhibits |

Only nondegree pathways can be published or receive completion records. Degree proposals remain private planning records. Internal learning units are explicitly defined; they are not college/transfer credits, GPA or an accreditation statement. Current university pathways have $0 tuition under the no-revenue model; the separate VR School keeps its existing enrollment terms.

Closing intake stops new applications and admissions decisions while honoring already accepted unexpired offers. Closing an offering stops new registrations while preserving existing work. Retiring a catalog closes new intake and preserves the exact older version and enrolled learners' curriculum. Reopening stays within the existing approved calendars and current qualified staffing; no backdated calendar, credit or grade rewrite is performed.

## Applicant assistance and records

The application saves durable private revisions. The exact policy text acknowledged with each submitted version is preserved; changed published policies require a fresh acknowledgment. A final submission does not silently reuse a stale policy acknowledgment.

Voice dictation is optional, uses the browser/device speech capability when available, and appends text for review. A typed answer always remains available. Browser/provider privacy and permissions are explained at the control.

Optional writing support shares nothing automatically. Applicants can review and copy a prompt, explicitly include their own writing context, and continue in the ChatGPT conversation they choose. A connected JournalOS conversation can read the applicant’s saved writing and, after explicit authorization, save a private draft; the applicant must personally review and submit. Signing in does not give the website access to ChatGPT history or memories. Advice must not invent achievements or personal experiences.

Application, personal progress and learning-record pages offer browser print/save as PDF. A private export follows and hash-checks all pages in the selected category before downloading a complete file, bounded to 10,000 records or 50 MB in the browser. Larger categories have individual paginated files and a confidential data-access request path. Exports are not immutable point-in-time database backups or cryptographic signatures.

The student inbox is the actual delivery channel for decisions, enrollment, advising, appeals and academic records. **Email delivery is not configured.** The K–12 portal has its separate admissions workflow; adult university queues do not display or replace those applications.

## Institutional metrics and recovery evidence

Completion rates state the numerator and denominator and distinguish an unfinished cohort from a final outcome. Course metrics count current approved judgments only. Program mastery requires a current passing course record explicitly mapped at the master stage and an achieved/exceeds outcome judgment.

Exploratory country/region groups use applicant self-reported text, normalized only for case/whitespace. No location, ethnicity or demographic identity is inferred. Groups below five are withheld; the dashboard remains private. These are observations requiring institutional interpretation, not causal disparity findings or proof of WSCUC compliance.

Storage checks preserve actual SHA-256/byte-length results for up to 500 institutional exhibits with a 50 MB total original-file budget. Larger source collections need a separately verified full audit from the paginated inventory. Missing/mismatched files are explicit failures; external source links remain unchecked. The report states that restoration has not been tested. Institutional snapshots include design/policy/cohort/offerings metadata but exclude individual student records and private academic events. Complete inventories are paginated; bounded snapshots refuse to claim completeness when required design inventories would be omitted.

Source snapshots, assessment judgments, curriculum versions and learning manifests reject hash/content inconsistencies. Concurrent stale decisions cannot create a second history row, notification or misleading audit event. Uncertain source-file writes retain artifacts for reconciliation rather than deleting a possibly committed record.

A real disaster-recovery plan must include provider/database backups, separately protected original files, credential recovery, restore drills and a recorded recovery-time/data-loss objective. Downloading a manifest and running a hash check do not establish backup completeness or successful restoration. No destructive restore or production data wipe is exposed by this release.

## API inventory

All personal/staff academic responses are private/no-store. Mutations require authenticated same-origin requests and the relevant current appointment. No caller-supplied owner ID overrides the authenticated account.

| Endpoint prefix `/api/university/` | Methods | Scope |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `policies` | GET, POST, PATCH | Public actual adopted text; authorized proposal and independent adoption review |
| `programs` | GET, POST, PATCH | Public approved/retired catalog; qualified design, independent approval/publication and retirement |
| `cohorts` | GET, POST, PATCH | Public open cycles; registrar creation and intake control |
| `applications` | GET, POST, PATCH, PUT | Own drafts/versions; appointed independent admissions queue and decisions |
| `enrollments` | GET, POST, PATCH | Own program offer acceptance, progression and consent-based status changes |
| `offerings` | GET, POST, PATCH | Own enrolled cohort or appointed staff; registrar course delivery/enrollment control |
| `course-enrollments` | POST, PATCH | Own prerequisite/seat-checked selection and eligible withdrawal |
| `portfolios` | GET, POST, PATCH, PUT | Own work or assigned faculty; exact-source assessment |
| `assessment-source` | GET | Own/assigned academic source or registrar-linked record; hash-checked preserved judgment/source |
| `final-assessments` | GET, POST, PATCH | Own/assigned faculty or registrar; independent final records and preserved corrections |
| `completions` | GET, POST, PATCH | Own/assigned advisor or registrar; evidence-based proposal and independent issuance |
| `record-shares` | GET, POST, DELETE | Owner-only explicit expiring sharing and revocation |
| `verify-learning-record` | POST | Limited current record only with valid learner-authorized token; no public record directory |
| `advising` | GET, POST | Currently appointed assigned advisor; learner-facing notes |
| `appeals` | GET, POST, PATCH, PUT | Own/assigned faculty or registrar; independent decisions/reassessment |
| `notifications` | GET, PATCH | Own private inbox and read status |
| `student` | GET | Own combined academic journey with explicit query limits |
| `teaching` | GET | Qualified assigned offering roster and source-linked assessment |
| `directory` | GET | Appointed staff selection metadata; no contact email or qualification content |
| `personal-export` | GET | Own paginated record categories and content hashes |
| `analytics` | GET | Institutional reviewers only; defined aggregates and privacy-thresholded observations |
| `operations` | GET, POST | Institutional reviewers; actual preserved exhibit checks; read-only for external reviewer |
| `publication-draft` | POST | Owner's explicitly authorized private journal draft from assessed work |
| `inventory`, `snapshots`, `records`, `evidence` | Existing scoped methods | Protected institutional design/evidence inventories and internal review |
| `support` | GET, POST, PATCH | Confidential assigned requests, including privacy/data-access and record correction |

The authenticated JournalOS MCP endpoint also adds `my_academic_progress`, `my_student_messages` and `institutional_operating_metrics`. These are read-only, permission-scoped tools. `my_university_application_writing` reads only the authenticated applicant’s saved writing; `save_my_university_application_draft` makes explicitly authorized private writing updates, preserves unset fields and resets accuracy acknowledgment. Neither can submit an application or confirm protected consent. Agents cannot appoint faculty, admit students, assign grades, issue awards or publish work through them. The existing explicitly authorized private course-publication draft tool is retained.

## Release verification and dependencies

Automated checks exercise the actual route handlers using isolated SQLite/R2, complete migrations and synthetic actors. They verify independence, source and judgment tamper rejection, finite seats, versioned policy acknowledgment, role expiry, stale concurrent writes, private exports/metrics, explicit sharing/revocation, appeals, current completion supersession and MCP permissions. Browser visual/speech/PDF behavior and real provider/LMS flows remain unverified in this environment.

Existing ORCID authentication is implemented. Direct work writes require genuine production Member API credentials and each researcher's separate authorization; `/authenticate` alone cannot write. No direct ORCID work write is claimed for this release. No DOI registration or metadata update is claimed without the actual registered identifier and authorized registration-agency integration.

Signed LTI 1.3 launches and explicit account linking are implemented; actual vendor registration and browser interoperability need a real pilot. Linking an LMS identity does not itself grant university admission, institutional appointment or course enrollment. Grade passback, roster synchronization and 1EdTech certification are not asserted.

Final hostnames are `virtual.research.university` and `press.research.university`, pending the recorded Namecheap DNS/SSL validation. All reviewable routes are published under `journal.research.university`; exact DNS records are in `/university/release`. The complete WSCUC framework and candid readiness assessment remain at `/university/standards`. Infrastructure supports evidence-based review; real authority, independent governance, finances, faculty, student outcomes, institutional reports and Commission decisions remain necessary.