Faculty To Vote on Core Reform

After months of vigorous debate, a proposal to reduce Core requirements will go before the full Faculty next month for an up or down vote.

The Faculty Council, a small group of professors who set the agenda for full Faculty meetings, voted unanimously yesterday to send the measure to the floor of next month’s meeting.

The proposal, if adopted, would give students a fourth exemption in the Core area closest to their concentration, thus reducing overall Core requirements from eight to seven.

The change would take effect next fall and apply to all undergraduates. Under the plan, students who had not yet taken a course in their new exempted area would be freed from that requirement. But students who had already fulfilled that area would not get any additional Core credit.

As the proposal heads into the March Faculty meeting, professors and administrators say the measure has a good chance of passing.

It has already gained the support of many senior administrators and the endorsement of key Faculty committees, including the Standing Committee on the Core, the Educational Policy Committee (EPC) and the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE).

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 said he favors reducing the number of Core requirements to provide students more freedom in planning their academic schedules.

“I think students, if given the choice about how to ‘spend’ that elective, will by and large not use it unwisely,” Lewis wrote in an e-mail.

But the measure has encountered stiff opposition from some professors.

While proponents had said reducing Core requirements would make students feel freer to take freshman seminars, some professors argued the two issues should not be linked. Others also said Core requirements are needed to prevent students from narrowing their academic interests too early in their education.

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

Many also said the proposal’s small scope ignores larger cracks in the Core’s foundation.

But Dean of Undergraduate Education Susan G. Pedersen ’81-’82, who presented the proposal to the Faculty Council yesterday, said the reduction in requirements is not meant to be a panacea for all of the Core’s ills.

“This proposal is intended to make the curriculum more flexible for our current undergraduates,” Pedersen said. “It is not intended to be some final settlement.”

Rohit Chopra ’04, a CUE member who spoke in favor of the proposal at a Faculty meeting earlier this month, said he was pleased, though not surprised, that the Faculty Council endorsed the measure.

“In the end it’s best for students,” Chopra said.

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.