Hampshire College Transforms Curriculum Around Contemporary Challenges

[ALF]

Hampshire’s Academic Innovation Planing Group has been working for the last few months to update and re-energize the College’s Mission and student experience. I like where they are heading, and will be very interested to see the resultant outcomes.

"Hampshire College announced today a bold new direction, fundamentally reshaping the liberal arts to match today’s needs.

Three essential elements define this inventive approach:

Urgent.
Students today are demanding and leading change, long before they arrive at college. Responding to students’ desires to create new knowledge that can meet the challenges of the 21st century, Hampshire is reorganizing itself around critical questions. As the pressing issues of our time evolve, so will our curriculum and structures, generating a continually innovating college.

Unbounded.
Successful innovators and changemakers easily cross the boundaries of specialization and expertise. Hampshire is removing all barriers across fields of study to create a truly transformative liberal arts college: no majors, no departments, no curricular divisions, liberating students to formulate questions that have never been asked before.

Entrepreneurial.
Asking the best questions and pursuing innovative outcomes require the ability to identify a challenge, mobilize resources, integrate diverse perspectives, collaborate, and successfully propose a solution. Hampshire’s new curriculum will ensure that students can take a project from idea, to investigation, concept, and completion."

https://www.hampshire.edu/news/2019/10/16/hampshire-college-to-transform-curriculum-and-student-experience-around-contemporary

[Publisher]

Would it be fair to state that Hampshire College is favoring an interdisciplinary approach to education over specialization ?

[ALF]

“Successful innovators and changemakers easily cross the boundaries of specialization and expertise. Hampshire is removing all barriers across fields of study to create a truly transformative liberal arts college: no majors, no departments, no curricular divisions, liberating students to formulate questions that have never been asked before.”

[Publisher]

Reminds me of the article about David Shaw running on another thread. He became a billionaire by combining his knowledge of computers & finance to create an ultra successful hedge fund.

Also similiar to St. Paul’s School, a boarding prep school in New Hampshire, which instituted a highly successful cross curricular humanities curriculum a few decades ago.

With respect to Hampshire College, I do not understand how this represents a change from the former design your own course of study.

“Hampshire’s new model–built on the College’s legacy of rejecting passive lectures and exams, restrictive departments, and prescribed majors–will invite students to ask big questions and draw on approaches from any field in order to find answers. Students will have the freedom to design their own academic programs with the guidance of faculty and staff, a hallmark of the Hampshire experience.”

[Mwfan1921]

It will be interesting to see how the market responds including the number of apps they get this year.

[Publisher]

I just don’t see any difference from the old Hampshire College.

[MYOS1634]

^ The focus on “entrepreneurial” and on going from idea to realization. They’re no longer going after the hippie kids, they’re going after the startup nation and social justice activists.

[lookingforward]

Sounds interesting- moreso because of the consortium. And if they successfully include solid internships, could be a draw. Suspect it may take a few years to get rolling and see impact.

[Publisher]

@MYOS1634 : Again, I fail to see the difference in reality. If it is as you stated, then the school would need to drastically change its faculty, staff & administration.

[Publisher]

@lookingforward wrote “interesting …because of the consortium.” Exactly.

As things stand now, I view the advantage of Hampshire College as:

Get admitted to 5 schools for the price of one application. Enjoy the ultimate in academic freedom while designing your own course of study.

[ALF]

While this does not represent a radical or revolutionary change for Hampshire, it does represent an effort to make the curriculum more relevant applicable to modern careers. Prior to this year, Hampshire was still organized into disciplines with similar orientations. It appears that organization is going to be replaced with a much more interdisciplinary organization. Students here (and elsewhere) could have pursued an interdisciplinary degree by pursuing coursework in different departments, but the college itself was not organized across disciplines.

[Publisher]

@ALF: That makes sense & seems to support my thoughts in post #1 in this thread.

[ALF]

More details from the Boston Globe:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/10/16/hampshire-college-revamps-its-educational-model-abolishing-traditional-academic-departments/qhfzfxVdjjD5AUafv2db7J/story.html

[dadof2d]

Thanks for posting this Alf. I hope it works for them.

[ALF]

“Soaring costs, a decline in their target population, and heightened interest by families and prospective students in explicitly career-focused studies have created strong headwinds for small, private liberal arts schools. No one knows if Hampshire can pull off a turnaround, but [Hampshire President, Ed] Wingenbach inspires confidence that a plan is in place and that it’s grounded in a realistic view of the challenges facing small liberal arts colleges.”

• "Can Hampshire College Be Saved?", Commonwealth Magazine, December 2019

https://commonwealthmagazine.org/education/saving-hampshire-college/?fbclid=IwAR0Kj4gHDWonJW5exkEw8QcHvEfyFZotHTr0MCiSbl328QC-RcuOwCClyck