The College of Arts & Sciences requires fewer credit hours to complete majors than at many similar institutions. The admissions office reports that last year 60 percent of students earned a major and at least a minor or second major. While the flexibility of simpler major requirements allows students to develop skills and pursue interests in different areas, it also risks socializing students into pursuing multiple unnecessary majors and minors they feel they need to have, at the expense of a true liberal arts education.
While the College sets the minimum general requirements for majors, individual departments then add and shape their own programs. Professor Leonard Green in psychology points out that major requirements are only a minimum and students should take advantage of taking more courses if it suits their interests.
He believes that the University needs to find the right balance between assuring that students will get a firm grounding and in-depth study in one major and giving students time to pursue multiple interests. He suggests that students would be better served from a slight increase in requirements, but it would have to be school-wide, since no department wants its own program to stand out as extraordinarily rigorous.
One major concern about lax major requirements is how graduate schools and employers view them-do they discount Arts and Sciences majors because they’re so easy to complete? Dean of Arts and Sciences James McLeod assures that there is no evidence corroborating this assertion.
Green also believes that minors are more appropriate for interest in a secondary subject, but that 15 credits isn’t substantial enough to fulfill this need. McLeod agrees that students should not choose to double major simply because of peer pressure. He argues that the real reason for a double major should be dual intellectual interests and that learning how to study in two disciplines can “often be greater than the sum of its parts.”
McLeod and Green believe that departments must be responsive to student needs, but that students need to ask themselves what their true goals and interests are. McLeod urges students to talk with advisers and ask questions of both faculty and themselves, noting that jumping into a major can be risky because each student changes and matures throughout college.
Another issue is that students can often circumvent distribution requirements by simply majoring in various subjects. Green suggests that this takes away from achieving broad education and exposure to multiple subjects, especially art, music and philosophy.
The curriculum committee meets each year to discuss requirements and other issues. McLeod says they do listen to student input and survey student interests. Green, though, warns that taking any actions to change the curriculum “opens a Pandora’s box, because everyone thinks they know what’s best, and the curriculum is the core of what makes the University.”