...To the Core

No formal, cohesive plan for changing the Gen Ed system was introduced until Rosovsky’s 1978 proposal.

In addition to its recommendations that students take one course from eight out of 10 academic subdivisions, the plan recommended a basic math course unless students could demonstrate competence on an achievement test. It also suggested that Expository Writing no longer count as one of the standard 32 courses needed to graduate.

Criticism of the proposed new curriculum came early, often and from all quarters.

Students expressed concern that the Core would give professors too much control over what courses they would need to take to graduate.

The Educational Resources Group (ERG), an advisory board composed of two undergraduate representatives from each House that sent student representatives to the Faculty’s Committee on Undergraduate Education, passed a resolution to express their adamant disapproval of the plan.

“The ERG unanimously declares that it rejects the Core Curriculum in its present form, and while supporting the concept of the Core, insists that substantial structural changes be made,” the statement read.

And Faculty members worried that no set of Core classes could possibly give students an adequately broad education.

The Division of Applied Sciences faculty, for example, voted 23-3 in March to go on record as opposed to the Core plan, saying it would downplay the importance of science and technology courses—as there was only one natural science half-course requirement in the initial proposal—and would discourage better students from attending Harvard.

A March Crimson poll also showed that 100 of 198 professors with stated opinions said they would not vote to adopt the Core in its present form.

Even the proctors protested. Forty of 60 first-year proctors signed a petition against the Core proposal, saying they felt they understood the needs of students better than the administrators who were the Core’s architects and that the plan would unfairly restrict students’ academic options.

“A lot of faculty were afraid that the common vocabulary that the initial ‘Red Book’ [which laid the foundation for Gen Ed] had established for students would be lost,” says Associate Dean for Faculty Development Laura G. Fisher, who was the senior tutor of Eliot House and a member of the Committee on House and Undergraduate Life at the time, “but others argued that the dilution of Gen Ed had already accomplished that.”

Realizing the lack of support for the Core, Faculty administrators agreed to make several concessions.

The Faculty Council voted to slash the proposal that Expos be an extra course requirement. And at an April meeting, the full Faculty passed two amendments, one of which allowed for the designation of specific departmental courses that could be taken in place of Core classes, and another which allowed students to “shift” a course from one Core area to another—not changing the total number of Core courses, just the distribution.

Still, the battle to gain the support of enough professors to adopt the new curriculum was a long one.