In the last few years, the College of Arts and Sciences has been trying new ways to reform the College-area requirements. The idea behind reforming the programs is to enhance the college experience of University students. This effort has culminated in the creation of the Forum and, most recently, the new college curriculum. Although well intentioned, these programs make navigating the College even more difficult for new students who may not have a clear understanding of what these programs are and how they will impact their education. These programs aim to to deliver a liberal arts education as effectively as possible. That means giving students the tools necessary to explore different programs and courses by themselves. Limiting exploration, instead of providing more assistance to help students find out what courses they should be taking, is counter-productive.
One program which seems to prevent a lot of student exploration is the Forum program. This program allows around 200 students — starting with the class of 2020 — to choose a curriculum revolving around one central topic like: “epidemics” or “visions of the good.” This seems like an interesting idea at first glance, but tying first-year students to a certain topic before they even arrive does not really make sense — it is my belief that the point of college is to try to figure out what our interests are and then gain skills in that field. Committing to a set classes before the college experience even begins runs counter to that idea. Also, it easy to imagine a first-year mistakenly signing up for this program because the topic sounded interesting and then being regrettably stuck in a program they knew little about. The Forum program is a repackaging of the college requirements so that they are more restrictive, which is not a productive approach. Encouraging students’ exploration, not restricting them, should be the goal when creating a new curriculum.
Besides the Forum, the most recent attempt to reform the college requirements is the new college curriculum. Currently the new college curriculum is a pilot program which may expand in the future to become the college curriculum for all. According to the program’s website, its purpose is to provide an “opportunity to participate in an innovative, comprehensive and interdisciplinary general education curriculum.” In this curriculum students will have to complete courses in 3 categories: the engagements, the literacies and the disciplines. This curriculum is intriguing, but when you examine the required courses it does not seem that different from the current college requirements, besides the emphasis on interdisciplinary learning. Although it is a worthy goal to produce well-rounded students, helping students find out what their passions are should be what the University is focusing its energy on.
This criticism of these new programs comes with the acknowledgement that the current college requirements are not perfect. There are steps that can be taken to review existing requirements and propose new classes to fulfill them, but using valuable resources to repackage college requirements is not the solution. Instead of trying to change the curriculum that students are required to study, emphasizing career guidance should be the priority. The college could try to expand current courses like “Liberal Arts and the World of Work,” or LASE 1200, which helps students discover what their strengths are and examine new career opportunities. Offering more courses like LASE 1200 or even making the class a requirement, is the direction the University should be going in. At the end of the day the biggest concern for students is what they are going to do with their lives and the University should be doing its best to help students along on that journey.
Getting a liberal arts education is important, and the University should be examining ways to enrich that experience for their students by adding interesting new classes to fulfill the College requirements. Remaking the requirements into different programs makes the process of achieving an effective liberal arts education far more complicated. The freedom of exploration that comes with being able to fulfill different requirements however you please, lets students take a variety of different classes. Some of these classes that some students never thought they would like, may end up transforming their lives. This can only come to pass if we give students the tools necessary to embark on that academic journey themselves. Instead of restricting students to these specific programs, we should stay with the same college requirements, while adding a career exploration component so students can better hone their strengths while they navigate their future course selection. At this University we should seek to expand student’s perspectives, not restrict them.
Jacob Asch is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at j.asch@cavalierdaily.com.
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