The system these students endorse could besomething like what Rice University offers now.

Rice combines a core curriculum with adistributional requirement, says Patricia S.Martin, Rice's associate dean of students affairs.

The university is in the process of revampingits core, but the distributional requirement willnot change, Martin says.

Half of each Rice student's required classescome form its core. The other half come form core.The other half come form three divisions--socialsciences, natural sciences and humanities.

Rice's approximately 2,400 students can choosefrom a total of 200 courses in order to fulfilltheir requirements in the three divisions.

This semester, Harvard's core offers just 49classes for approximately 6,500 undergraduates.

The result of Rice's broad selection, saysMartin, is that students get smaller classes andcan take higher-level course whenever they wish.

And a system which, like Rice's, emphasizesvariety and choice could help alleviate some ofthe problems in Harvard's core.

"With distributional requirements, I thinkstudents could get more in-depth study into thingsthey're interested in," says Samuel A. Hilton '94.

Another alternative to Harvard's corecurriculum is simply to do away with generaleducation requirements altogether.

Many students also endorse this options. Theysay that even without coercion, undergraduateswould choose to take widely distributed classes.

"We would do it ourselves," says Brian J. Hunt'95. "They should just abolish the core. Withoutthose requirements, the natural process is thatpeople would venture out and take differentcourses. That is the nature of people who come toHarvard."

At Brown University, which has no generaleducation requirement, dean of the college SheilaE. Blumstein says students still take classes in avariety of areas.

Brown provides an "educational framework" ofgoals for students, she says, but students canchoose not to fulfill them.

"The students understand the principles [of thedistributional framework] and are using themresponsibly for the most part," she says.