This time, the goal of the curricular review was “the cultivation of diverse approaches to knowledge.”
The result was the Core Curriculum, which was adopted in 1978.
“The Core” was made up of 10 broad areas: two in Historical Studies, two in Literature, two Science, Music and Art, Social Analysis, and Moral Reasoning—the Quantitative Reasoning requirement was not added until a 1997 review of the Core.
Students were required to take courses in the eight Core areas furthest from their concentration.
This represented a more holistic way of considering higher education, a question not only of social justice or quantifiable academic progress, but one of “approaches,” giving students a breadth of approaches and techniques that would serve them in the rapidly modernizing, multicultural world.
Though it has been tweaked several times in the past 25 years, the Core curriculum is the system Harvard College uses today.
Reviews of the Core in the 1990s revealed general satisfaction with the system: 90 percent of Core courses were taught by senior faculty, students were happy with their concentration courses and even intrigued by their Core requirements.
But the past 25 years have brought more change to the College, the nation and the world.
In an age of globalization, where rapid developments in science, technology and scholarship have changed the fabric of the University, many believe that it is time for Harvard to review its curriculum once again.
Next fall, four committees—assembled at the behest of Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby and Dean of Undergraduate Education Benedict H. Gross ’71—will examine every aspect of the undergraduate experience at Harvard.
By year’s end they hope to have recommendations for a new curriculum, one that will yet again seek to ensure Harvard graduates are well equipped for life and leadership in the 21st century.
—Information from the following books were used in the reporting of this article:
Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1936.
Morton and Phyllis Keller, Making Harvard Modern, 2001.
Richard Norton Smith, The Harvard Century, 1986.
—Staff writer Rebecca D. O’Brien can be reached at robrien@fas.harvard.edu.