Skip to main contentSkip to main navigationSkip to footer content

Common Course Numbering

The vision of the Common Course Numbering (CCN) initiative is to align the University of Arkansas System institutions under a common course numbering schema and index to support Arkansas students in transfer, remove barriers to higher education, and ease administrative overhead of determining course equivalency in the processing of transcripts.

All UAFS courses will be converted to CCN in Fall 2025. See the course lookup page below to find the current UAFS number and the CCN number for that course.

UAFS/Common Course Numbering Lookup

FAQs:

  • It will develop a common index of course numbers using a standardized schema of course discipline prefixes.
  • It will provide transparency as courses sharing a common course number will clearly transfer among system institutions.
  • It will build on the existing Arkansas Course Transfer System (ACTS).

  • It will not eliminate academic freedom.
  • It will not require the renaming of courses.
  • It will not require program of study alignment (common programming).
  • It will not realign academic departments.

  • 10 digits
  • 4 digit alpha prefix identifying course discipline
  • 1 space (will not use hypens, dashes, underlines or other delineators)
  • 5 digit numeric suffix identifying the course
  • 1st character - course level
  • 2nd and 3rd characters - course identifier
  • 4th character - multipurpose
  • 1 or 2 will be used for courses with credit hours greater than 9, 3-9 will be used if if additional characters are needed for the course identifier due to size of catalog, 0 will be the default placeholder if not used for credit hours or course identifier
  • 5th character - credit hours

Common Course Numbering Example

  • An initial course number list was built using the Arkansas Course Transfer System (ACTS) list. This list was the driver for building a full subject code prefix list. 
  • For courses that did not have a prefix in the ACTS system, the following prefixes were used:
  • UA Fayetteville prefixes (general coursework)
  • UA MS prefixes (all medical and health related disciplines)
  • UA Pulaski Technical College prefixes (all technical disciplines)
  • The initial course discipline prefix list was distributed to UA System institutions for review. Any institution that had course disciplines not covered by the initial prefix list submitted those disciplines for consideration. 
  • Institutions were asked to provide a complete course list matched to the subject codes provided so a complete system course list compiled.
  • Registrars were asked to match existing course equivalencies based on prior course evaluations beginning with ACTS courses. 
  • The Common Course Numbering Index of all courses and all University of Arkansas schools was presented to each campus for review. 
  • The final index of courses was presented to each institution after this last round of reviews.