Professors React to Gen Ed Report

A week after the Harvard College Curricular Review Report on General Education was released, faculty members say they are hopeful that its recommendations for a new system to replace the Core will be voted on by the close of the academic year.

The report proposes a hybrid system of distribution requirements and broad “Courses in General Education” to allow students greater freedom of choice in course selection. Designed as an improvement on the fragmented Core Curriculum, the new recommendations reduce requirements to three general areas—Arts and Humanities, Study of Societies, and Science and Technology.

Yet as the report undergoes further debate in faculty meetings and student forums in coming weeks, questions remain about the practical application of its recommendations.

“The Committee has done a good job of laying out an argument for a broad distribution requirement,” Phillips Professor of Early American History Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote in an e-mail. “The success or failure of this new, much more open, system will depend on how it is implemented.”

TRUSTING THE MARKET

According to the report’s recommendations, students will be able to choose from a large number of departmental courses or extra-departmental “Courses in General Education” to fulfill their general education requirements. Students will be required to take three courses in each of the two areas furthest from their concentration, but may choose whatever three courses they wish within a given area.

“The idea is to let the market decide—both student demand and faculty supply,” said Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language Louis Menand, a member of the Committee on General Education.

The report recommends that students continue to take courses in analytic reasoning, quantitative analysis, and in moral reasoning, but does not require that they do so.

The combination of these two systems of general education—broad, integrative “Courses on General Education” and narrower departmental courses—provides an even greater breadth of options for students, but some faculty members are unsure about how the hybrid system will work in application.

“One knows what a Core curriculum looks like, what a distribution requirement looks like, what a great books requirement looks like,” said Faculty Council member and Classics Department Chair Richard F. Thomas. “We don’t know quite what it is we have here...this is an experiment to some extent.”

Some faculty members say they worry that the report’s decision to limit requirements in order to promote simplicity and free choice will result in students taking all their general education courses in only two or three departments. Three economics courses, for example, might fulfill the Study of Societies requirement. They said a system with more free choice must be accompanied by improved advising so that students can make informed choices.

“The problem is cherrypicking,” Menand said. “There’s nothing that will prevent that in this system.”

“[The proposed program] does seem to be pretty laissez-faire,” Thomas said. “I would like to see a bit of control there.”

Student representative to the Committee Danny F. Yagan ’06 noted that additional requirements were still being discussed when he joined the Committee in October, and pointed to the report’s emphasis on free choice as one of the reasons for the open system.

“[Students] have varied interests and I think those interests will be reflected in the courses people take,” he said.

Discussion over the inclusion of more extensive requirements and the implementation of the report’s recommendations is expected to continue as faculty members and students examine the report more closely.

Faculty say they are concerned whether the hybrid system will solve the dilemmas created by the Core and whether both halves will appeal equally to students.

“We don’t want to suggest a program that might potentially die on the vine,” Thomas said. “We need to just make sure that [the recommendations] make sense and not pretend that something makes sense without really testing it.”

Menand said the success of the general education courses depends on Faculty interest as well.

“The hope is that some new courses [in addition to ex-Core courses] will be developed but there is nothing that forces that to happen,” Menand said.

TAKING STUDENTS SERIOUSLY

While the report stresses the importance of student choice and freedom, student involvement in the Committee’s recommendations has depended largely on undergraduate representatives to the Committee.

The booklet of “Student Essays On the Purpose and Structure of a Harvard Education,” conceived of as a way for students to comment on the purposes of general education, was presented at the September full Faculty meeting. The booklet, which Yagan helped to edit, was finished only weeks before the Committee’s final report was released last week.

“The student essays were never really timed to have an impact on deliberations, which was odd,” Menand said.

Forums were held throughout the past year on Curricular Review topics, but the insights into students’ desires that many Committee members noted resulted from informal personal interactions rather than open forums.

Both Yagan and fel low Student Representative and Undergraduate Council (UC) President Matthew J. Glazer ’06 streissed the eagerness of fellow Committee members to hear their input during meetings.

“I was really impressed by the seriousness and enthusiasm with which faculty members on the Committee greeted student comments,” Yagan said. “It was a fully equitable committee in that respect.

Glazer said that student representatives sought to involve the student body as a whole through UC “Issue of the Week” campaigns and other initiatives.

“As student representatives, we considered our own opinions as well as the perspectives of the greater student body,” Glazer said.

While the slow process of the Curricular Review may discourage some students from getting involved with changes they may not see implemented during their time at Harvard, Committee members say they are hopeful that students will voice their opinions and help shape the general education recommendations.

A forum for faculty and students on the topic of general education has been scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 16 at 4 p.m. in University Hall’s Faculty Room.

—Staff writer Allison A. Frost can be reached at afrost@fas.harvard.edu.