A Step Toward Core Reform

Discussions by a University committee last week on a proposal to reduce the number of Core requirements from eight to seven would be a step in the right direction towards Core reform, though it only addresses the symptoms—not the origins—of the Core’s problems.

The Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) first considered this proposal in 1997, and last week the committee took up the issue once again. As Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 said, “We should do this and get it over with.” Every year that passes without reducing the Core’s burden on students forces more students to take watered-down courses often short on substance.

The proposal has caused a split amongst faculty on the CUE. Many feel that the reduction may weaken the Core’s ability to achieve its central goal of exposing students to multiple disciplines. However, allowing departments to choose one additional Core exemption for its concentrators will not significantly narrow students’ academic experience; most departments touch on more than three of the broad Core areas anyway.

The proposal would benefit students and provide greater flexibility in selecting courses; the onerous Core requirements currently comprise a quarter of the classes students are required to take in their undergraduate careers. Proponents of the measure say that reducing the Core by one course would encourage more first-years to take a freshman seminar, an important and worthwhile goal that would allow more first-years to directly interact with a professor in an small-class environment. The Faculty has vastly expanded the program in the past year, though many deserving students are still turned away each semester.

Giving students one additional space in their schedules would be good, but as some members of the CUE admit, it does not solve any of the larger problems with the Core. Any substantive Core reform must address the severe lack of course offerings in several Core areas as well as the Core’s increasingly apparent inability to achieve its mission, though only the abolishment of the Core and the institution of a distribution requirement would eliminate the problems the Core creates.

This proposal should be put to a vote before the summer, and the Faculty should implement it at the earliest opportunity. But until the Faculty confronts the deeper questions of the Core’s purpose, the Harvard undergraduate experience will continue to substitute shallow course offerings for true breadth of study.

Dissent: Cosmetic Changes Aren't Enough

There is no question that Core program needs to be revised. The course offerings in each of the 11 required areas are limited and consequently, students are often punished by not receiving core credit for electives that seemingly fit into one of the mandated eight areas. As a required non-concentration requirement, Core classes often have large enrollments detrimentally matched with limited offerings; students habitually suffer from a lack of personal attention in a class they picked from a narrow choice.

The staff admits that the reduction of the Core requirement from eight to seven courses would not solve the greater problem of the Core curriculum. However, they also myopically endorse, out of pure dislike for the current Core program, this proposed step of the CUE to reduce required Core classes. The staff misunderstands the consequence of both this proposed change and their ultimate goal, an overhaul of the Core curriculum. With either action, students would presumably not take those classes most removed from their concentration and instead only take electives pertaining to their known interests. By failing to recognize that any reduction in the number of required Core classes would erode the basis of a liberal arts education, the staff unknowingly seeks to deprive students of the opportunity to take those seemingly foreign classes in which a student’s interest may be surprisingly piqued.

That said, the staff has rightly endorsed in the past a vast increase of departmental classes to count for Core credit. In the Handbook for Students, the University maintains that the “goal of the Core is to broaden each student’s perspective.” Only by broadening the offerings by including departmental classes will the University truly broaden the perspective of students of the College.

—Jasmine J. Mahmoud ’04