Core Stifles Student Choice

The current structure of the Core Curriculum, in which undergraduates are required to choose from a specific list of Core courses, has created a special burden for Harvard students. As shopping period continues, many students are now struggling with their twice-annual task of twisting schedules to accommodate Core classes. These scheduling difficulties, caused by a flawed Core, go beyond mere inconveniences--by severely restricting choice, they distort students' academic careers and reduce the quality of a Harvard education.

In 1997, when the number of core offerings had hit a seven-year low, the Faculty resolved to increase Core offerings in order to increase student choice and decrease class sizes. That spring, there were only 42 Core courses offered. Yet since the Faculty's decision, reform has been slow in coming: this spring there are only 47 courses being offered in the original Core areas, and the number of cross-listed classes has not grown quickly enough to counter the shortfall.

The endemic shortage of courses has caused Core class sizes to balloon. The eight-course requirement expects that each student will take, on average, one Core class per semester; with a school-wide enrollment of approximately 6400 students, Harvard's Core program must expect an average of more than 100 students per class. These large classes hinder the learning process; approaches to knowledge do not need to be taught in gargantuan lecture halls.

To reduce their class sizes, many Core courses have instated lotteries, which serve more as an index of the problem than a solution. The Core is not responsible for all lotteries at Harvard--but the restrictions it imposes and its many biennial classes magnify run-of-the-mill lotteries into true bloodbaths, such as that accompanying Historical Study B-61: "The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice" in the fall of 1998.

Existing scheduling difficulties are similarly exacerbated by the Core. With many Core courses packed into a few popular lecture times, students are often left facing conflicting requirements, especially those natural science concentrators and pre-med students who face morning courses and afternoon labs. This situation often compels students to choose Core classes, not on their merits, but on the basis of whether they fit in the schedule, a dilemma which regularly becomes a crisis for pre-meds concentrating in the humanities.

Neither Harvard nor its students benefit when undergraduates are condemned by the course catalog to vast lecture classes or forced by artifacts of scheduling to courses that they dislike. Harvard can adopt requirements that expose students to varying approaches to knowledge while at the same time guaranteeing them the widest range of choice.