Many school are trading in their old three-area systems for more finely-tuned divisions. Harper College, the liberal arts school of the State University of New York at Binghamton, has not yet decided what will replace its old Nat Sci, Soc Sci, Hum program, but H. Daniel Cohen, acting dean of the college, says the faculty is considering three options. One is an eight-course core curriculum for all students; another would let students choose among five or six sets of eight-course curricula; the third option (which Harper calls the Harvard Plan) would be a three-area distribution requirement with a limited choice of courses.

Many observers are reserving judgement on the Core until Harvard develops specific courses because they realize the strength or weakness of a liberal arts curriculum lies in the individual courses and not in broad guidelines. Choosing to reform courses and not guidelines, a Johns Hopkins Physics professor, Gordon Feldman, is leading an experiment to develop four interdisciplinary courses that students can use in the next two years to fulfill general education requirements.

Although Feldman insists the program is entirely experimental and not designed to lead to a required core, he says an interdisciplinary approach would provide students with better exposure to subjects outside their major.

More than that of any other school, Northwestern's new curriculum resembles the Core. Last spring, just days before Harvard voted in the Core, Northwestern substituted a six-area distribution requirement for a four-area one. The new program adds the study of values to the traditional Soc Sci, Nat Sci, Hum triad, and sets up historical studies and formal studies (math and quantitative reasoning) as independent course areas. The study of values and history mirrors features in Harvard's Core that the Faculty proudly points to as special innovations. Formal studies is Dean Weingartner's pet project because he thinks lumping math in with science allows students to avoid taking one or the other. Harvard's Core task force, chaired by James Q. Wilson, Shattuck Professor of Government, originally called for a separate math requirement, but the suggestion was defeated in the final version, much to the chagrin of science professors.

Unlike most schools, Harvard has long kept its general education courses separate from its interdepartmental offerings, thereby avoiding many interdepartmental squabbles. Others do not have the resources to develop a completely separate set of courses for gen ed. But even Harvard has not completely escaped the problem of academic politics, which complicates general education reform. Atlantic Monthly says departmental power struggles and the ensuing need for compromises between competing interests ensures that no single, clear vision of educational priorities guides faculties. "Somewhere in the profusion of competing interests, the goal of the pursuit of knowledge was submerged," says Alston Chase. "At best it surfaced as one of the values being touted."

Such give and take may be a necessary evil. An unwillingness to compromise recently helped defeat proposed curricular reforms at Yale and Princeton. Many educators find no contradiction between the ideal of a single core of knowledge necessary for an educated person, and the fact that virtually every group of educators comes up with different specifications for that Core. Northwestern's Weingartner says, "there are many good ideas floating about. We don't have a tradition in which being educated is definable."

Students play roles of varying importance in educational change. Most schools allow students to serve on committees forming the curricular proposals, but rarely do students initiate any changes. Student reaction to new requirements ranges from annoyance to disinterest to quiet praise. One student at Harper says sarcastically of the proposed requirements there, "Some people are under the impression that this is going to be an Ivy League college someday." A student at Syracuse said his college's plan would lead to a "ridiculous, arbitrary core." But student newspapers at Stanford and Northwestern lauded proposals there.

Riesman says students play a greater role than they realize in determining the fate of their curriculums. "Students vote with their feet and with their attention," he explains. Because professors dislike teaching semi-captive audiences trying merely to fulfill requirements, they try to design courses that attract eager and interested students.

Since the Core was passed only last year, the extent of influence it will have on other schools is not yet clear. If officials at other institutions revising their curricula are familiar with any other general education program, it is usually Harvard's. But sometimes they tend to feel bitter about what they see as Harvard's undeserved limelight. Nevertheless, phone calls continue to pour into University Hall requesting information on the Core. Schools as unlike Harvard as the University of Tampa and the University of Puget Sound are considering core curriculums. As Riesman notes, "The affluent started out wearing blue jeans, and now it has caught up with the blue collar." Ah, the vicissitudes of fashion.