Whitlock published its 620 courses across forty departmental sites, each maintained by whoever in the department had last been handed the login. Entry requirements contradicted the printed prospectus, three departments still advertised courses that had closed, and the central admissions team spent every August correcting applicants who had believed the website. Two previous consolidation projects had been abandoned. Both had begun with a content management system selection.
We began with governance instead. Course data got one owner per field, an approval route and an annual review date before a single template was drawn. The finder then reads that record rather than restating it, so a change to entry requirements appears everywhere at once and cannot be quietly overwritten by a department page. Departments kept editorial freedom over everything that was genuinely theirs.
Applicants can now filter by entry route, start date and study mode across the whole institution, which had never been possible before. Correction volume in the admissions inbox fell by more than half in the first cycle. Two departments asked to be migrated early, which is the only migration argument that has ever worked at this university.