A further absurdity of the current system is that the Core forces students to enroll in courses for which they are overqualified if more advanced classes are not on the list. To earn a foreign language citation, for example, a student must complete at least four half-courses in a language, three of which are upper-level. These courses are often historical or literary and delve into issues of culture to a far greater extent than a Foreign Cultures Core; yet a foreign language citation does not fulfill the requirement, and students hoping to graduate are often forced to take less meaningful courses in order to meet the Core’s arbitrary regulations.

Over the course of this year, the Standing Committee on the Core Program has approved several small additions to the Core, slightly expanding the Core offerings as well as the number of departmental courses that can be taken for Core credit. A significant expansion of the number of courses that qualify for Core credit could take some pressure off the system, and the English department especially deserves to be commended for its efforts to expand students’ options.

But tinkering around the edges with the Core curriculum is only a short-term answer; a serious and permanent overhaul is needed. A distribution requirement would serve the same purpose of exposing students to new approaches to knowledge without arbitrarily limiting their choices. Rather than pick from an ever-shrinking list of special courses, students should be allowed to choose any departmental course that involves one of the recognized approaches to knowledge. In this way, students would be exposed to many different types of thought in an equally rigorous setting without the constraints of a restrictive Core.

The inadequacy of the Core remains one of the most pressing and visible problems with undergraduate education at the College. President-elect Lawrence H. Summers has expressed a commitment to improving undergraduate education during his term; he should recognize that any plan to improve education at the College must include significant Core reform. The Core has not accomplished its mission of broadly educating Harvard’s students, and it must be replaced.