What Data Structure would you use for a Curriculum of a Department in a University?

Question

For my homework, I'm implementing a course registration system for a university and I implemented a simple class for Curriculum with list of semesters and other properties like name of the department, total credits etc.

But I'm wondering if I can inherit this class from a Graph Data Structure with Edges and vertices.

Anybody done similar things before?

My current design is something like this:

public class Curriculum
{
    public string NameOfDepartment { get; set; }
    public List<Semester> Semesters { get; set; }

    public bool IsProgramDesigned { get; set; }

    public Curriculum()
    {
        IsProgramDesigned = false;
    }

    // 
    public string AddSemester(Semester semester)
    {

Answer 1

As an enterprise architect I would absolutely not use a graph structure for this data. This data is a list and nothing more.

For a problem similar to this, the only reason I would ever consider using a graph structure would be to potentially create the relationship of course requirements and prerequisites.

This way you could then use the graph algorithm to determine if it is valid for a student to register for a class by making sure it is a valid addition to the tree. Same for removing classes, it could be validated to make sure you aren't dropping a class and staying enrolled in the lab for the class example.

Now if I was going to actually implement this. I would still have an overall list of classes that have a Key to the vertex in the graph representation. One thing to keep in mind is that graph algorithms are about the biggest heavy hitter you can throw at a database so minimize the amount of work done to pull the graph out is always key. Depending on the size and scope, I would also evaluate if I could store entire graphs in a serialized form or to use a document database for the same reason.

Which in this example would be the most likely route I would take. I would store the entire object of prerequisites co-requisites and so on right inline with my course object. Since the graph is a set it and done event there's no need to do an actual graph traversal and you're better off storing the pre-calculated graph.