And What About Us?

Last May, the flaws of the constantly maligned Core Curriculum were recognized by the Faculty in legislation. But what does that mean for current students? Apparently, not much.

Given the Faculty’s glacial pace on this issue, the Classes of 2008, 2009, and 2010 are already resigned to their fate: there’s no escaping the Core. And given the Core-centric advice received over the past two weeks by the Class of 2011, it seems that the College thinks they too will not get to reap the benefits of a revitalized General Education program. In other words, we’re all stuck in a sinking ship.

When the Committee on General Education—which, among other things, has been given the power to determine how to transition to the new system—meets for the first time tomorrow, it must remember that current students continue to deal with all the flaws and frustrations of the Core Curriculum. And while we understand that implementing an entirely new curriculum takes time, many of the Core’s major problems are easy to fix and can be addressed within the next few weeks.

Perhaps the worst feature of the Core is its limited course offerings. This semester, for example, only three courses count for Historical Studies B, and only five are offered in the spring. And for students choosy enough to want a halfway decent Core class, the pickings are even slimmer: of the five “Science A” courses offered this semester, the highest CUE rating is a 3.7; there are no courses in the spring that do any better.

There are some obvious reasons why students face such a paucity of options. First, and most importantly, a course can only be included in the Core Curriculum if professors ask for such a designation. But since whatever prestige might once have been attached to designing and teaching a Core class has been destroyed, there is no longer any incentive to improve courses for a dying system. Many professors are understandably unwilling to shoehorn their courses into the Core administration’s absurd one-syllabus-fits-all model, which requires midterms and finals.

None of these problems are new—they have been mentioned by students for years and were mentioned by the Task Force on General Education last year. But little to nothing is being done to fix these problems for students currently in the College.

The solution is simple: Open up the Core, and do it immediately.

Most crucially, the Core Office must begin granting a greater number of exemptions for students seeking Core credit for departmental courses. There exists no plausible reason why, for instance, a small history seminar should not count for a Historical Studies requirement.

Last year, the Dean of the College and Dean of the Faculty unilaterally decided that a number of new humanities courses would count for Core credit. That should happen again on a much broader level.

To accomplish this, arbitrary technical requirements for Core courses should be relaxed. Courses without midterms are just as valuable—often more—than those with them. The Committee has admitted the senselessness of such administrative hurdles; the Faculty need not await the full implementation of General Education in order to make that adjustment for the existing Core.

Furthermore, the committees that decide what counts meet so infrequently that even those students whose petitions would pass muster under the byzantine requirements of the current system must wait months to hear back, if they ever do. In order to fix this problem, petitions should not only be granted for more courses, but also the process by which they are granted must be streamlined.

The Faculty’s embarrassing track record on curricular reform cannot continue. With over 6,600 students wasting their time fulfilling the requirements of a failed system, University Hall must rescue the Harvard of today before building the Harvard of tomorrow.