“It would devolve upon departments to provide the courses for distribution requirements,” he says. “But those might not be vetted as thoroughly [as Core courses], nor as much with a view toward providing access to a particular field for people from totally unrelated fields. I think [students] might end up with many fewer courses that are accessible to them.”
Burgard also disagrees with the idea that Core requirements are too extensive and should be trimmed. Instead, he faults the demanding nature of concentration requirements.
“Seven courses does not strike me as unreasonable,” he says. “I think the real problem is and always has been concentration requirements. Harvard requires over-concentration, in my opinion, to the extent that in many fields, undergraduates are essentially expected to be graduate students. This is what I call disciplinary narcissism.”
And some students say that increased flexibility may not be the right way to go; rather, it would be more important to ensure that every student departs Harvard with a basic grounding in certain areas of knowledge.
“Even now there is not comprehensive curriculum. I have gone through college and never had comprehensive skill training,” says Irene L. Sanchez ’03-’04. “There are gaps in the way it [the system] is now, and distribution would be the wrong direction.”
WHERE WE GO FROM HERE
While current opinion of the Core remains somewhat divided, come this Spring, the Faculty will have a new general education proposal to debate.
According to Gross and several professors, a new system will be proposed which will replace the Core with the Harvard College Courses—classes based on foundational knowledge of key fields, not approaches to knowledge.
While the proposal is likely to receive a mixed reception, the review has thus far come out against the Core.
In lieu of the Core’s 11 areas, many faculty and administrators now believe that an enhanced distribution requirement is the best way to balance flexibility with the “core” knowledge necessary for the 21st century.
—Staff writer Ella A. Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Laura L. Krug can be reached at krug@fas.harvard.edu.