Are College Prerequisites Legitimate?

For a long time I felt that the prerequisites at SFSU had more to do with controlling the flow of where students go than any legitimate academic reasons.  Honestly, for an introductory computer course, do we really need Statistics?  

I'm sure, there'll be bombastic explanations to justify the cause for this complex maze of prerequisites.  However, anyone with a brain can discern that many of these prerequisites are frivolous.  

There will be some that are plausible and needed prerequisites, such as ACCT 100 before ACCT 101.  Though, that's more of the exception that the rule in what's going on here.

Just looking this graphic, anyone can look at the complexity of all these prerequisites at SFSU.  I can count 25 connections needed between courses.  

In contrast, I looked at another program, such as American Business School in Paris, which students can participate through a study abroad with SFSU.  Their program is different, but if I match up the courses that are the same in both institutions, there would be only 9-11 connections required by ABS.  Here's two graphics, one with SFSU course numbers, and another one with ABS course numbers:

(Note: Regarding second graphic, off-topic, SFSU's FIN 350 are broken into two courses in ABS, and SFSU's MGMT 405 is also broken up.  Though students that do a study abroad only have to take FIN 210 and MGT 210 respectively for equivalents. Speak with advisor regarding this)

SFSU Prerequisite Maze

Navigating which courses to take and what are the prerequisites can be difficult, so I crafted my own guide to help myself, and maybe others through the maze of courses.  I made a visual guide and checklist, useful for both sides of the brain.

I published a document online: https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B1n2Syuv2pIHZjg0Y2Q2ODAtODA4OS00NDY2LWJmNjctZjJhZTBiZDMyZTUx&hl=en

Should I stay or Should I go?

I have to make some hard decisions about where and when to take courses: abroad or locally.  I wish to travel to Hong Kong and Paris through study abroad, but I need to take some lower division courses at the community college in additionally to upper division at my home university, SFSU.

On the staying side, I could become more economically secure (jobs in USA), more prepared (needed prerequisite courses for the advance courses abroad), and brush up on my language skills (Chinese and French).

On the going abroad, I am at a loss of positives except that I can finish up my education a lot sooner, and when I return, I'll spend a semester wrapping things up, improving GPA, and preparing for Masters program.  I also get an amazing experience with excellent industry aligned courses if I go early.  There's a risk that the programs might change if I delay.

To mitigate the issues mentioned above, I could take courses online in the summer, secure financial aid for community college summer studies.  Additionally, I can save up enough to enroll in a language program in either Paris or Hong Kong (something with the institution directly for reasonable price), or alternatively maybe Portugal as language program is only € 700 and the rent is quite affordable.  

Scripting Segue

At San Francisco State, all courses transferred and all courses applied to your major are tracked in a DARS report.  It's really powerful and intuitive tool to help you assess your academic standing.  The problem though arises when you have a ton of courses transferred from different institutions, it gets quite messy and time consuming.

I thought that this should be a good solution to practice scripting in Perl, and so I embarked and after about 3 days of on and off coding, I perfected my script.  It takes the DARS report from its web format (HTML), filters, sorts, and outputs the result into a format usable in an Excel spreadsheet.

In the end of the endeavor, I found that the totals in the Unofficial Transcript (another report that actually shows your GPA) was accurate.  But now I know precisely how much effort is needed to nudge up my GPA, and I can toy with projections on a Spreadsheet.

If any other business students do these types of activities, I'll be surprised.  Ultimately though, the gain from all this is that my skills are sharper...