What do you believe makes an undergraduate core curriculum effective?

[Erin's Dad]

^ That is a good question. ??

[mom5i52]

Without core curriculum, students can finish 3 majors in 4 years, or graduate early. They can show real interests for the courses they like.

We paid big tuition and kids should learn what they want to learn.

[tk21769]

I think the following elements can contribute to the effectiveness of a core curriculum:

- Motivated, curious students
- Small classes
- Lots of discussion in and out of class
- Experienced professors who understand how to prompt a discussion and keep it on track
- Use of rich primary source materials
- Focus on big, enduring questions that cross academic boundaries
- Willingness to question the meaning of things (words, data, concepts)
- Challenging writing assignments and exams
- Respect for different points of view; openness to persuasion
- Respect for clear definitions and convincing evidence
- Academic freedom (freedom to think and speak; freedom from political or economic pressures)
- Continual reassessment of the curriculum and whether it is effective

Most of the same elements can contribute to the effectiveness of an "Open" curriculum, too. However, in a Core model, the faculty sets the standards for what kinds of knowledge are most worth having (not the individual student, not the government, not social or market forces).

[ucbalumnus]

Originally Posted by mom5i52

Without core curriculum, students can finish 3 majors in 4 years

Depends on the majors. Three may be a tight squeeze unless they have overlapping major requirements or relatively few major requirements.

[cobrat]

Originally Posted by Marian

Yes, but does it really happen?

One of my kids was in a high school IB program where most of the students had to take most of the same courses, so it was very much like a core curriculum. But I don't think there were ever the kind of intellectual discussions you envison. Sure, the kids talked about the classes, but it was more about what was likely to be on the next test or whether they could get away with not doing some of the reading. I would be very surprised if there were many conversations about course content.

This is more dependent on the campus culture and individual students. Although Oberlin didn't have a core curriculum beyond general distribution requirements, one of my fondest undergrad memories was having long meandering discussions on a wide variety of topics including political philosophies, History, Science Ethics as applied in genetics, Sociology, Literature, music, etc and how they related to our perceptions of the world.

Those conversations drew from what we were learning in class and from other sources and tended to get so interesting and involved that they'd continue into the following day if we didn't have class/exams/ECs/part-time jobs to prepare for the following day/week.

Funniest part was not having a "Core Curriculum" ended up working well because we had a wide variety of majors evenly distributed among Humanities, Social Science, Natural Sciences, and the Conservatory.

As for the OP's question...whether a Core Curriculum is effective or not really depends on its intended purpose and whether the students subjected to it are engaged and interested or not. I've seen plenty of Columbia College undergrads who weren't terribly engaged and interested for a variety of reasons...including not understanding the implications of Columbia's "Core Curriculum" undergrad program until they were enrolled for a semester or few. Hard to believe...but true.

[LoremIpsum]

I strongly believe that an open curriculum is good for the student AND the classes the student is in, since most students actually WANT to be in the classes, rather than having to take them to fulfill a core requirement.

My son attends Brown, with its well-known open curriculum. I think "wanting to be there" can often make a world of difference in the classroom experience: The discussions are more intense and, should you need to collaborate on a project, you can count on the other student to work on it enthusiastically, too.

It seems to be a selling point when hiring professors, too: Imagine a classroom where everyone is paying attention!

[ucbalumnus]

Re: #36

While an open curriculum reduces the number of students taking unwanted breadth requirements, there could be students in some courses who are not all that interested in them, but have to take them for their majors (they are more interested in some other subareas of the major), or "need" to take them for some other reason (e.g. pre-med).

Note that engineering majors at Brown do have to take out-of-major humanities and social studies courses, as this is required for ABET accreditation. This makes these majors exceptions to the open curriculum.

[LoremIpsum]

You are certainly right to a degree, ucbalumnus, but I also got the sense that the courses are often designed differently at Brown: You don't always need to waste a semester taking a dull general Intro to X class just to be able to take a more interesting variant that has Intro to X as a prerequisite. Since Brown encourages buffet-style sampling, you'll often see an interesting class that incorporates the general intro material while focusing on a more interesting specialized sub-area of the field.