On April 13, ArtSci Council released a statement of proposed changes to the curriculum in the College of Arts & Sciences. The statement describes the goal of the new system: “Our aim is to provide students with a solid liberal arts education in the context of a research-oriented university, characterized by depth of knowledge in a major; breadth of understanding of modes of inquiry and the forms of knowledge in several core areas; and a sense of perspective and integration, which comes from seeing connections across courses, disciplines and schools.”

Recent student criticism of the curricular status quo has centered around the idea that the current cluster system creates discord and irrelevance in study plans. Particularly for students with non-science majors, the Natural Science selections are seen as a cumbersome and irrelevant chore. Moreover, the distinction between Textual & Historical Studies and Language & Arts often seems arbitrary, due to the similarities between the disciplines. While the Discovery Curriculum represents a fair attempt to integrate education and encourage exploration among students, it too has long been in need of reform. ArtSci Council’s proposal is thus to be commended as a step in the right direction, and the prescriptions of the reforms are dead-on.

The proposal includes four complaints about the current cluster system: The system is inadequate (there is little collaboration between professors who teach courses within clusters), it is unwieldy (more and more clusters are added every day, and courses in clusters are not offered with sufficient regularity to finalize student plans), it is unnecessary (clusters often “ride the coattails” of second majors and minors and special programs) and too demanding (it takes the study of humanities and divides it into two divisions: TH and LA).

These complaints are in line with student criticism, and the changes propose combining LA and cultural diversity requirements into a new area of study called LC, allowing “integrated learning” in areas within the major to replace clusters outside the major and a focus on applied mathematics instead of logic—change in the right direction. The council’s acknowledgment that the increasing interdisciplinarity and complexity of majors themselves make coherence less of a concern in a core program is dead-on. Moreover, its statement that fewer requirements will encourage the right kind of exploration by students is well heeded. Many freshmen are not trying to decide between biology and political science; they are trying to decide between biology and biochemistry, or between economics and political science. In this vein, the push to fill current requirements in the first two years often detracts from students’ capacity to plan their major programs of study aptly.

The question remains, though, whether this push in the right direction goes far enough. Because majors are increasingly interdisciplinary and because—according to the council’s proposal—between 40 and 50 percent of students already choose a combination of majors and minors that fulfills more than one area requirement, it remains to be asked whether a system that requires anything is more of a hindrance than it is a help and whether students will better see the connections across disciplines if they are allowed to choose these connections for themselves.

Compared to peer institutions, Wash. U. has majors with fewer requirements, enabling students to double major with little problem. It may be pertinent to ask whether breadth requirements are better satisfied by making majors themselves more complex, with enhanced and relevant interdisciplinary requirements to better fulfill the goal of a cohesive, liberal arts education.