As computer science education continues to evolve, minors in Computer Science represent an important but understudied pathway for students to develop computational thinking skills and interdisciplinary expertise. This study examines 104 Computer Science minor programs from the top 120 universities by graduation rates to understand their current structure, requirements, and accessibility.

Computer science degree requirements often have a rigid pre- and corequisite structure, which can impede a student's progression through a degree and in particular can add one or more semesters to time to completion, particularly for those students who need to retake a course that serves as a prerequisite to other courses and for students who are not calculus-ready when they enter university. In this paper, we present the results of a comparative analysis of curricula before and after a major structural revision. The first curriculum adheres to the conventional, rigid prerequisite structure, while the second emphasizes student choice and multiple pathways through the degree. No changes were made to course content/outcomes between the two versions. Employing curricular metrics such as complexity and centrality, we examine the degree progress of 3010 students over a six-year period. Specifically, our investigation looks at the impact of reducing curricular complexity on student attrition from and attraction to the CS major. The new curriculum, with a 60% reduction in curricular structural complexity, showed both increased retention of students over the old curriculum (67% to 98%) and an increase in the number of students converting from undeclared to computer science (44% to 69%). Our findings demonstrate that reducing curricular complexity need not compromise program rigor and can benefit students by providing greater flexibility and ensuring earlier exposure to (and therefore retention in) CS.

Not all degree programs are created equal. Indeed, the structure, prerequisites and overall complexity of some programs create barriers that impede student success. Inspired by the methodology of previous papers investigating the inverse relationship between curricular complexity and program quality, in this paper we investigate the relationship between curricular complexity and the representation of women earning CS degrees. We created curricular maps of 60 computer science degrees and calculated measures such as program complexity, course blocking, delay factor, and total math/CS credits to understand complexity's correlation with the representation of women CS majors. Our results show that degree complexity, blocking factor, and delay factor are all inversely related to the representation of women. In addition, we present the courses that most commonly impede student progress and provide suggestions to enhance degree programs based on the insights gained.

We have created, piloted and are growing the Align program, a Master of Science in Computer Science (MS in CS) for post-secondary graduates who did not major in CS. Our goal is to create a pathway to CS for all students, with particular attention to women and underrepresented minorities. Indeed, women represent 57% and underrepresented minorities represent 25% of all bachelor's recipients in the U.S., but only 19.5% and 12.6% of CS graduates, respectively. If we can fill this opportunity gap, we will satisfy a major economic need and address an issue of social equity and inclusion. In this paper, we present our "Bridge'' curriculum, which is a two-semester preparation for students to then join the traditional MS in CS students in master's-level classes. We describe co-curricular activities designed to help students succeed in the program. We present our empirical findings around enrollment, demographics, retention and job outcomes. Among our findings is that Align students outperform our traditional MS in CS students in grade point average. To date we have graduated 137 students and 827 are enrolled.