So How's That Open Curriculum going

Corbett
Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:43:04 +0000

And none of the students I know personally at Brown or Amherst fall into the purported categories discussed in this thread.

They aren’t exactly mythical. A quick search of the amherst.edu website turned up the following student profiles:

[Student A](Diversity Outreach Interns | Diversity Outreach Programs | Amherst College): I chose Amherst for a number of reasons: open curriculum (no more math!) …

[Student B](http://www3.amherst.edu/~xcountry/whyAC.html): The open curriculum and never having to take math again was a nice option as well.

[Student C](https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/issues/2001_fall/staller): she … had vowed that, after high school, she would “never take an art class, never take a science class, and never take a math class” [in fairness, this student apparently did start taking art classes]

I am not going to insist that all of these students would be better off if they took linear algebra. My only contention is that if a school tends to attract students with such attitudes, then realistically, this might have a negative effect on math enrollments.