Lost in Transition

As shopping period gets underway, all Harvard students are finding themselves up curriculum creek without a paddle. The period of transition from the Core to General Education has been poorly handled and badly implemented, forcing students into a position where choosing classes (and choosing a curriculum) is a trauma. Although we stood behind the original Gen Ed program as envisioned by its creators, the entire process has become perverted by the College’s inadequate response to meeting students’ academic needs during the interim. The result: beleaguered upperclassmen with nowhere to turn to fulfill Core requirements and equally frustrated freshmen who are forced to choose between a meager selection of Gen Ed courses and the defunct Core. No student at any point in his or her academic career is immune to this gross deficiency as the College struggles to reconcile the general requirements portion of its curriculum.

Instead of a robust selection of exciting new Gen Ed courses for freshmen and a diverse and solid group of Cores for continuing upperclassmen, we are faced with a meager smattering of both. There are either one or zero offerings available in each of the Gen Ed categories this fall, and many Core fields are equally scarce, such as Literature and Arts C. (Only two Lit and Arts C course will be offered in the fall, and only three will be offered in the spring.)

It is disappointing that the Committee on General Education recommends that members of the class of 2012 continue under the Core. With the debut of a slate of Gen Ed offerings, this advice to freshman is essentially a vote of no confidence in the brand new program. Attempts to ease the transitional burden further highlight the lack of a substantive difference between the two programs. When every Gen Ed course either counts for Core credit or is a literal recasting of a former Core course, it becomes clear that both curricula are so watered-down that tangible and substantive differences between the two are difficult to find. As such, the original ideal of Gen Ed as a breath of fresh air to replace the detached and defunct Core has been completely violated. The fact that the Advising Programs Office has jokingly called Gen Ed the “same thing” as the Core is insulting to the designers of Gen Ed and those students forced to study under it.

The transition between the Core and Gen Ed needed to happen quickly, and it did not. Upperclassmen left behind now find themselves scouring the course catalog and petitioning the Core office to find feasible options to complete remaining requirements. Forcing students to choose between a handful of obscure Core courses (with some exploring duplicate topics) to meet a requirement is unfair to a student body who has long been promised a revamped system of education. There need to be concrete incentives for faculty to develop as many new Gen Ed courses as possible to remedy this problem in future semesters.

Until Gen Ed can stand on its own, there is a real and viable solution to help increase the options available for students who still need to fulfill their requirements: Every departmental course should count for at least one area of Core curriculum credit. Only such a drastic loosening of requirements during the transition can make up for the failure of academic options during this period of limbo. Departmental courses alone, however, cannot stand in the place of a quality Core. The Core office should have worked and should continue to work to make sure a significant number of Core offerings remain available during the transition. Many of the departmental courses are beyond the reach of the typical Core consumer who is not likely well-versed in the subject.

The main pivot behind the Core Curriculum, as outlined by University President A. Lawrence Lowell was that“every educated person should know a little of everything and something well. Similarly, the goal of General Education is for us students to “understand [our]selves as products of—and participants in—traditions of art, ideas, and values.” These ideals are lofty and laudable. Unfortunately, though, they have proven nearly impossible to achieve in an efficient and well-implemented manner. As such, students have been left instead as products of—and participants in—a tradition of great plans poorly executed.