A Demographic Analysis on Prerequisite Preparation in an Advanced Data Structures Course

Previous work in computing has shown that Black, Latinx, Native
American and Pacific islanders (BLNPI), women, first-generation,
and transfer students tend to have worse outcomes during their
time in university compared to their majority counterparts. Previous
work has also found that students’ incoming prerequisite
course proficiency is positively correlated with their outcomes in a
course. In this work, we investigate the role that prerequisite course
proficiency has on outcomes between these groups of students.
Specifically, we examine incoming prerequisite course proficiency
in an Advanced Data Structures course. When comparing
incoming prerequisite course proficiency between demographic
pairs, we only see small differences for gender or by first-generation
status. There is a sizeable difference by BLNPI status, although this
difference is not statistically significant, possibly due to the small
number of BLNPI students. In addition, we find that transfer students
have sizeable and statistically significantly lower prerequisite
course proficiency when compared to non-transfer students. For
BLNPI and transfer students, we find that they also have lower
grades in the prerequisite courses, which may partially explain
their lower prerequisite course proficiency. These findings suggest
that institutions need to find ways to better serve BLNPI and
transfer students.