Extending Curricular Analytics to Analyze Undergraduate Physics Programs

Curricular Analytics (CA) is a quantitative method that analyzes the sequence of courses (curriculum) that students in an undergraduate academic program must complete to fulfill the requirements of the program. When applied to a curriculum, CA returns a complexity score that indicates the overall complexity of the program. This study compares the complexity of undergraduate physics programs at 60 institutions in the United States. The institutions were divided into three tiers based on national rankings of the physics graduate program, and the means of each tier were compared. No significant difference between the means of each tier was found, indicating that there is not a relationship between program complexity and program ranking. Further analysis focusing on the core physics and mathematics courses for each tier identified significant differences in the number of required core courses and the core complexity per course. Programs with the highest rankings required fewer core courses while having a higher core complexity per course.