[Python] How to Represent and Parse Complex University Course Prerequisites Programmatically?

I’m working on a project where I want to build a tool that, given a student’s completed courses, GPA, program, and year standing, outputs which courses they are eligible to take in future semesters.

So far, I’ve:

Scraped course information from the university website using BeautifulSoup.

Extracted the prerequisite string for each course (everything after the word “Prerequisite”).

Saved all the course data into a file.

The challenge I’m facing now is how to represent and parse complex prerequisite conditions programmatically. Some examples of prerequisites include:

"ECON 101 or 30 units"

"Any introductory-level Computing Science course or SCI 100, and any 200-level course"

"STAT 151 and (MATH 114 or MATH 125)"

As you can see, prerequisites can include:

Direct courses

Abstract requirements like “30 units” or “200-level course”

Logical operators (AND / OR) that can be nested

Combination of abstract and direct requirements

I’m considering representing each course as an object, and each prerequisite as a separate object (or tree) that can handle these logical structures.

My questions are:

What are some good ways to represent nested AND/OR prerequisite conditions programmatically?

How would you approach parsing raw prerequisite strings into such a structure? Should I rely on regex/rule-based parsing, or would an LLM help here?

Any suggestions for handling abstract requirements like “any 200-level course” or “30 units” alongside direct courses?

I’m looking for ideas, references, or best practices from others who might have tackled similar course eligibility or dependency problems.

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