Key Contacts 

If you have questions, please contact CLAS Undergraduate Programs. 

Applicability  

Instructors 

Policy Purpose and Description  

CLAS students may choose to take courses without earning credit for them. This is called “auditing” and requires the approval of the course instructor and the appropriate academic advisor. Audited courses do not meet College requirements and carry no credit toward graduation, but students are still charged for auditing.  

Visit the Registrar's tuition tables for more information about tuition and fees. 

Guidelines

Instructor permission is required for a student to audit a course; in some cases, an audit for a course is not appropriate and the instructor may decide not to allow an auditor to join the course even if there is space in the class. 

Auditors generally are required to attend class and to complete all assignments, projects, and exams as the syllabus indicates for enrolled students in the course. The only difference is the grade for an audit, which is recorded as Audit Successful/Audit Unsuccessful (AUS/AUU). Instructors should carefully review these course expectations with the auditor.   

In some cases, an instructor may decide that reducing some assignments or exams, for example, is appropriate for a particular auditor. These details should be discussed, and the instructor and auditor should put this agreement in writing to ensure that disagreements do not occur about whether or not the auditor has earned a successful completion of the audit. 

Instructors should also keep in mind that a student's particular registration status for a course, such as taking the course as an auditor, is considered private information and should not be shared. 

Definitions  

Staying in the same course with the same instructor and same section but decreasing credit hours to zero is an audit.

Procedure 

Students may change your registration from “credit” to “audit” (or vice versa), but only during the period when adding courses is allowed. For semester-length courses, a change from credit to audit is allowed only during the first 10 days of the fall or spring semester. For off-cycle or summer courses the date varies. The change to audit must be completed by the "last day for undergraduates to add or change to P-N or audit status and late register" as listed on the Registrar’s Academic Calendar for semester-length courses, or the "last day to add without collegiate approval" listed on the Course Deadlines page for an individual course. No changes will be permitted after the deadline.

Beginning the sixth day of the fall or spring semester, the first day of summer/winter session, or the first day of any off-cycle course that begins within the regular session, students should use MyUI to request a change of hours to audit. They must follow the steps in MyUI and obtain the required authorizations and complete the change to audit. If an hours change to audit is not possible in MyUI then it can be processed using the email option from the student's uiowa.edu email address to registrar@uiowa.edu.

Forms  

NA

Frequently Asked Questions  

NA 

Related Information 

NA 

Revision History 
Revised 3/2024