And Javier A. Valle ’04 says he found little appeal in many of the classes themselves.

“Subjects that should be really interesting, like foreign cultures, are not,” he says.

IF IT AIN’T BROKE...

But as the revised general education system is drafted and some students and faculty bemoan the existing requirements, others still question whether the Core should go away.

Member of the Committee on the Core Program and Thomson Professor of Government Richard Tuck says the Core curriculum is responsible for unique courses that don’t fit into academic departments.

“My own view is that the strength of the current Core is that it generates a lot of extremely interesting courses that might not be generated otherwise,” he says. “I think you have to judge by results and in my area, the results have been quite good.”

Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn worries that if the Core were to disappear, so would the ideology behind it—namely the thought that students should have some training in various approaches to knowledge.

“Having taught in the Core for many years and having taught in general education before it, I would be sorry to see some of the underlying goals disappear,” he says. “Students ought to be acquainted with some of the basic materials across different disciplines.”

It is a system that some professors say has worked tremendously well.

“I think the Core is a huge success. There’s an incredible number of outstanding courses, the likes of which you’d be hard-pressed to find at other universities,” says Committee on the Core Program member and Professor of German Peter J. Burgard. “What’s wonderful about these courses is that they bring together students from all over the University in a way that I do not think would happen in other [departmental] courses,” he says.

Burgard says that Core courses—whose syllabi must be approved by the Committee on the Core Program—are some of the most carefully designed courses in the University.

“No other courses in the entire University go through so much review,” he says. “That ensures a pretty high level of quality.”

In addition, the Core has also been praised for the way it functions—as a kind of “virtual department” Tuck says.

Its institutional design preserves departmental independence because Core classes are overseen by an external committee.

Burgard says he worries that without a body of courses open to all, students may fall victim to the caprices of the various departments in terms of what courses they could take to fulfill their requirements.