Degree Planning

Program Mapper requires a tremendous
amount of manual data entry.

Those are your words. You also said it is not intuitive and is really only appropriate for prospective students. Here is what a dynamic replacement looks like when the math does the work.

The Two Constraints

Why some paths cannot be shortened

Two things set the floor on time-to-completion. The first is unit load: 74 units at 15 units per term takes at least 5 terms. The second is prerequisite chains: BIOSCI 201 before 202 before NURSNG 112, and so on. When the chain is the bottleneck, adding more units per term does not help. Your counselors know this intuitively. The tool below makes it visible.

completion_lower_bound
total / cap ≤ numTerms
Pigeonhole: units must fit in semesters.
prereq_chain_forces_terms
∀ i ≤ k, i ≤ assign(chain(i))
Course i in a chain lands in term i or later.
combined_bound
max(total / cap, chainLen) ≤ numTerms
COC Nursing Path

The full-time path your counselors advise

Sixteen courses. Seventy-four units. The prerequisite chain runs from BIOSCI 201 through NURSNG 240. At full-time pace, the fastest possible completion is eight terms. That is not a recommendation. It is a lower bound the computer proved.

Term 1
ENGL C1000 +3
15u
Term 2
BIOSCI 221 +3
15u
Term 3
NURSNG 112, ART 101
7u
Term 4
NURSNG 114
7u
Term 5
NURSNG 124, NURSNG 126
10u
Term 6
NURSNG 234
5u
Term 7
NURSNG 236
6u
Term 8
NURSNG 240
9u
8 terms · 74 units · lower bound = 8 · PROVABLY OPTIMAL
Dynamic View

Time-to-completion at different unit loads

This is the part Program Mapper could not do. Drag the unit cap and watch the terms reflow. When the chain is the bottleneck, adding more units does not help. Your counselors can show this to a student and the student can see exactly why.

15
321
8
terms needed
5
unit bound
8
chain bound
8
lower bound
PROVABLY OPTIMAL
Term 1
ENGL C1000
4u
BIOSCI 201
4u
COMM C1000
3u
PSYC C1000
3u
14u
Term 2
BIOSCI 202
4u
STAT C1000
4u
8u
Term 3
BIOSCI 221
5u
5u
Term 4
NURSNG 112
7u
7u
Term 5
NURSNG 114
7u
7u
Term 6
NURSNG 126
5u
NURSNG 124
5u
10u
Term 7
NURSNG 234
5u
NURSNG 236
6u
11u
Term 8
NURSNG 240
9u
9u
The 8-course prerequisite chain is the bottleneck, not your 15-unit cap.
Part-Time Scenarios

21 prerequisite units at five different paces

The question you hear most: how much longer if I can only take two classes? Here is the answer for the prereq phase alone.

2
full-time
2
12u/term
3
9u/term
4
part-time
7
minimal
Each scenario is a native_decide kernel check.