Are Prerequisite Courses Barriers to Pharmacy Admission or the Keys to Student Success?

Abstract

The variability and complexity of course prerequisites across colleges and schools of pharmacy can result in barriers to admission. While prerequisites play an important role in the admissions process and assuring student preparation, requiring excessive prerequisites can create unnecessary challenges for applicants. Prospective students may choose not to apply to a particular pharmacy school or even enter the profession because they cannot complete all course prerequisites in time to apply. Extraneous prerequisites can also contribute to the cost of education and educational indebtedness, which can more adversely affect minority and disadvantaged students. Pharmacy programs should carefully examine their course prerequisite requirements and consider new ways to measure preparedness to attract a diverse and competent pool of applicants to the profession while also being more competitive with other health profession programs.

Prerequisite knowledge‐based automated course planning with semantics consideration

“…Most of the previous research focuses on the effectiveness of prerequisite courses, through either reporting positive impacts of prerequisite courses [5,6,19,24] or reporting no statistically significant differences between students' completion of the prerequisite courses and their success in the advanced course [29,37]. Some research articles indicate that excessive prerequisite courses may become obstacles to admission to a degree program [8] and to reducing the time-to-degree, giving pressure to instructors and administrators due to higher education's competitive landscape [21]. As an alternative to the CPF, which is currently the most widely used prerequisite system, we propose to adopt the KPF for flexibility in prerequisites.…”

“…All knowledges that serve as a postKnowledge of a course should be constrained in the same way. The general formulation for the postKnowledge constraints is defined in Formulations ( 7) and (8).…”

“…However, students are required to take the prerequisite course if it is listed as prerequisite for the subsequent course. The excessiveness and complexity of prerequisite courses may delay the completion of the degree requirements of students [21] or may result in admission barriers to transfer students and graduate school applicants [8].…”