Trimming Core Requirements Splits Faculty

Students and Faculty on the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) divided sharply yesterday over a pending proposal to reduce the number of Core requirements from eight to seven.

Easing the requirements would make first-years feel freer to take a freshman seminar, said Dean of Undergraduate Education Susan G. Pedersen ’81-’82, who proposed the measure. The Faculty has drastically increased seminar offerings in the past year, and eliminating a Core requirement would encourage more students to take advantage of the program, she said.

Many Faculty members disputed Pedersen’s proposal, saying that the question of Core requirements should not be linked with freshman seminars and that the Core is needed to prevent students from getting too narrow in their academic interests.

“We already have to fight with graduate students to broaden their education—[this proposal] could be a total slippery slope,” said Professor of Psychology Marc D. Hauser.

At yesterday’s CUE meeting, Pedersen acknowledged that reducing Core requirements by one course does not answer larger questions of the Core’s purpose, which she says the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) needs to address eventually. But she said the measure would give students more flexibility in their course selection—at least on a temporary basis.

“We don’t know where we are going in curricular matters, but this is something we feel we can to do now for our students,” Pedersen said.

Student members of CUE said the Core is in need of bigger reform than a simple reduction in requirements.

“The difference between seven and eight half-courses is negligible, and I don’t even feel like I have received a broad enough education after taking eight,” said Brianna M. Ewert ’03.

Although an earlier proposal on reducing Core requirements explored counting freshman seminars for actual Core credit, that plan had been struck down by Faculty members who said it would limit the variety of seminar offerings by making seminar leaders feel they had to fit their courses into the Core’s pre-defined subject areas.

The CUE has no legislative power and can only discuss these issues before they go before the Faculty in February.

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 said, although the proposal does not address the issue of Core education in its entirety, the measure would be a first step in Core reform.

“We should do this and get it over with,” he said.

Also yesterday the CUE discussed eliminating cum laude degrees awarded solely based on grade point average—which would mean students could earn honors only through their departments. For most departments, such honors are available only to students who write a thesis.

Pedersen said the cum laude in general studies degree is a “default category of honors” left over from the beginning of the 1900s, when students were not required to concentrate in a particular field. She noted that making honors contingent on department work emphasizes the importance of concentrations.

Students on CUE felt differently.

“Just because you are not doing what your concentration says is an honors track, it does not mean that you are not doing intellectually challenging work,” Ewert said.

But several Faculty members said they support a modification of the current system so that students do not feel that a diploma needs an honors distinction to accompany it.

“Students have to learn that a Harvard degree in itself is worth something in itself,” Lewis said.

Members of the committee also endorsed a move towards stricter requirements for Advanced Standing eligibility, starting with the Class of 2007.

Presented by Lewis and Rory A. Browne, associate dean of freshman and director of Advanced Standing, that proposal will go to a Faculty vote next month.

—Staff writer Jessica E. Vascellaro can be reached at vascell@fas.harvard.edu.