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I spent most of freshman year completely unaware that Harvard was a liberal arts institution.

Like “progressive” and “completely respected by the U.S. government,” I thought “liberal arts” was just one of the phrases people threw around because it applied to Harvard sometime in the past two centuries. Despite a reputation formidable enough to rival its endowment, Harvard’s guiding philosophy is mysteriously absent from its public image.

A liberal arts education is defined as a broad overview of fields like the humanities, mathematics, and sciences. As part of its liberal arts curriculum, Harvard requires four General Education courses. Unfortunately, Gen Ed courses are primarily concentrated in narrow fields of study that fail to provide the broad knowledge that constitutes a liberal arts education. In order to fulfill its stated mission as a liberal arts school, Harvard must reform course requirements so students engage meaningfully with disciplines outside their concentration.

This is not to say that Gen Eds aren’t interesting or worthwhile — on the contrary, I think their specificity plays to professors’ strengths and allows for a rich exploration of the subject matter. Gen Eds aren’t bad classes — they’re just bad liberal arts classes.

What’s worse, many Gen Eds are specifically scouted by students to be as easy as possible, rewarding courses that require as little engagement as possible with increased enrollment. It is entirely possible for students to spend all four years without having ever meaningfully engaged with a subject outside of their concentration.

Much like the primary offender in a messy relationship, Harvard needs to either commit to liberal arts or separate itself from the label entirely. And after almost 400 years, I think it’s high time Harvard settled down. Although a vocational education might provide you with more hands-on training, there is growing evidence to suggest that employers are now prioritizing human skills like critical thinking and problem solving more than career-relevant training.

Beyond utility, however, is the simple fact that learning new things and engaging with different perspectives is enjoyable. No one here was admitted because of their all-encompassing love for investment banking. Most people have interests outside of their discipline that they would excel in given the opportunity. A pre-med student whose application centered around their desire to improve access to medical care in their community would probably do incredibly well in a Sociology class, even if they considered themselves a “STEM person.”

Of course, students always have the opportunity to pursue elective courses in their own time. Typically, college and concentration requirements take up two-thirds of the 32 classes needed to graduate, allowing students to pursue around 10 classes in any field they like. However, it’s not clear if students actually capitalize on this opportunity. The amount of double and joint concentrators has skyrocketed since 2022, implying that students are using the free space in their schedules to obtain another degree rather than explore a range of fields. Furthermore, the popularity of joint concentrations, which require overlap between the two fields of study, suggests even less extra-disciplinary engagement. Baking exploration into the college experience could provide undergraduates with intellectual fulfillment they might not experience on their own.

In order to truly shape college requirements into something resembling a liberal arts education, Gen Eds should be revamped completely to focus on a variety of topics across certain fields. Columbia’s mandatory Core Curriculum, which offers standardized classes across fields like Art, Literature, and Contemporary Civilization, is a great model for a true liberal arts curriculum.

To be fair, Harvard already requires students to take one course in each of three Divisions: Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science & Engineering. But because these classes aren’t standardized, there’s no guarantee that they provide a comprehensive overview of the field they cover.

An easy way to fix this problem would be to limit the classes that fulfill the Divisional Distribution requirement to a few specific courses. For instance, someone looking to fulfill their Social Sciences distribution would do so by taking Economics 10: “Principles of Economics” or Social Studies 10: “Introduction to Social Studies,” while someone looking to knock out their Arts & Humanities requirement would take Humanities 10: “A Humanities Colloquium” or Philosophy 8: “Early Modern Philosophy.” These classes are introductory courses that provide the broad foundation in a discipline requisite for liberal arts.

Whether it be through reforming the Gen Ed catalogue or reworking Divisional Distribution requirements, Harvard needs to start taking their academic mission seriously.

Harvard calls itself a liberal arts school. It’s time our courses provide a liberal arts education.

Khadija T. Khan ’28, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Currier House.