Chicago's version of the Core vs Distribution Requirements at other Schools. What's the difference?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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Can somebody explain to me the difference between an University that requires broad Distribution Requirements and Chicago’s core curriculum? Isn’t Chicago’s core really just a Gen-ed “Distribution requirement” because it gives students a lot of flexibility in taking pretty much any course in different fields of thought?

That is very different from Columbia and St John’s which can be more accurately categorized as “having a true core” right?

I know Chicago is different from Brown and other schools in this regard, but is it really a “true Core” school?

For example, here is Harvard’s Gen-Ed requirement

What’s the real difference here?

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What do you mean by a “true Core?”

If you mean a Great Books or classics curriculum, then no, Chicago doesn’t have one.

If you mean a set of distribution requirements that will define two of a student’s four years in college, ensuring that every student is familiar with concepts the university considers vital to a liberal arts curriculum, Chicago has one.

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@NotVerySmart Here’s another way to ask the same question. In your opinion does Harvard have a core, based on the text I pasted from their website? Or for that matter a lot of colleges that have similar distribution requirements in broad areas. I am trying to understand whether “Chicago’s core” is “merely a marketing concept that is no longer really unique” or whether it differs from Harvard’s “gen ed requirements” in any significant way to legitimately require a different name, because other colleges don’t refer to their “Core”. They just call it “Gen-ed distribution requirements”

Chicago seems to imply that they are somehow different. I am trying to find out how that is

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CollegeAngst: Someone better qualified than I am will answer the question. But I do believe that your questioning attitude means you are definitely UChicago material. I mean this as a compliment.

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Chicago’s core is actually something of a hybrid. There are 8 areas addressed by Chicago’s General Education requirements, and they really span a spectrum from very core-like to pure distribution requirement. However, the core-like elements are very strong, and pretty much represent what people are taking about when they refer to Chicago’s Core Currlculum.

The General Education requirements address the following:

Humanities. There is a very limited set of courses that satisfy this requirement, and they have a lot of overlap in what their syllabi. So students can choose from a list of options, but there is a set of specific texts that everyone will be studying, albeit in different order and with somewhat different focus. And there is another set of texts that 80% of everyone will have studied. 100% of students take 2-3 quarters of this in their first year at Chicago.

Social Sciences. Similar to Humanities, a limited set of courses with enormous overlap. Everyone has to take three quarters, no exceptions. Sosc and Hum are really the core of the Core.

Arts. Students are required to take 1-2 quarters of arts-related courses. Not every arts-related course offered by the university qualifies, but unlike Hum and Sosc there is no real overlap. Things that count tend to be entry-level performance/production classes, and "history of . . . " or “theory of . . .” surveys. No placing out.

Civilization. Students take 2-3 quarters of Civ, usually a single course. For lots of students, this is integrated with study abroad. A very wide range of Civ classes is offered, and there is no real common content, but there is a common interdisciplinary approach, in which the courses tend to cross departmental lines. I think some Civ courses can be taken for credit in a specific major (although you can’t double up on major credit and Core credit with the same course), but many cannot and remain outside the normal structure of academic departments. No placing out.

Math. Students are required to take 2 quarters of math at roughly the level of calculus. The requirement can be met with AP credit or a placement test. This is effectively a distributional requirement.

Physical science. Students are required to take 2 quarters of physical science. The standard introductory courses in Chemistry and Physics qualify, but the college also offers special interdisciplinary courses that satisfy this requirement for non-STEM types who do not want to take one of the pre-med courses. I think you can also place out of this with AP or placement test credit. So, effectively a distributional requirement. Note, however, that the number of courses offered that people take to satisfy this requirement is not much larger than the number of options for meeting the Hum or Sosc requirement.

Biological science. Same as physical science, except I think you can only place out of 1 quarter. (I am not sure about that.)

Foreign Language. Everyone is required to take three quarters of a foreign language or to demonstrate equivalent competence through standardized tests (AP or SAT II) or special qualification tests. A distributional requirement.

If you don’t place out of anything, the General Education requirements would require about 19 courses (out of 42 required to graduate), or about 40% of your college coursework. Slightly more than half of that is either very core-like or significantly core-like, and the remaining half is basically distribution requirements.

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@JHS: Thank you! That was very informative

Also just to increase my understanding. I did some digging. To keep it simple, I will continue to compare it with Harvard. Here is how Harvard describes its Gen-ed requirements

I assume a half course means a single semester course.

If I am reading this correctly, the big difference seems to be the year long Humanities sequence at Chicago. I don’t see an equivalent one at Harvard. The Math, Physical and Biological sequences also sound a little more hard core at Chicago, whereas at Harvard they seem more like survey courses, but I am not sure of this.

Bottom Line, at Harvard, through its eight categories, students must take three courses of empirical or hard sciences and five courses of humanities and social sciences. I think Chicago requires 6 in the sciences and 9 in the Humanities and Social Sciences. So 15 instead of 8 at Harvard.

So Gen Ed at Harvard is 25% of degree (8/32), while at Chicago the Core is roughly 35% of degree (15/42)

So there is a difference. Not sure how Columbia stacks up against this

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Ignoring questions of quantity or percentage of an undergraduate degree, UChicago’s core is unique because it is a happy medium between Harvard and Columbia. A few of the following points are taken from a conversation I had with a professor who is influential within UChicago’s HUMA Core (I, of course, have no firsthand experience with either Harvard’s or Columbia’s core).

Harvard gives students free reign over the courses they take to fulfill the distribution requirements. These courses need not (and probably will not) be related to each other, and so students get a smattering of knowledge here and there in random topics that interest them. Thus, while students may be happy exercising their freedom and picking their own courses, they do not gain a deep understanding of any broad field. Additionally, the courses are likely to be introductory classes i.e. Intro to Anthropology or Intro to Chinese History. Why is that bad? It’s because departments often teach their intro classes expecting students in those classes to consider majoring in their field, and thus the classes are not designed for students to have a “takeaway” after a single course.

Columbia, to my understanding, makes all students take the same courses for the key portions of its core (Lit Hum and Contemporary Civ). Thus, all students become acquainted with the same texts and ideas, and their Core engenders a feeling of unity among the students body that’s similar to that at UChicago. However, the problem with this setup is that professors largely do not have a say in what they teach and ultimately teach books that they themselves probably do not find interesting. A lack of enthusiasm on the teacher’s part compromises the classroom experience for students.

UChicago’s core retains a hint of the freedom given to Harvard undergrads while also ensuring that students read a largely shared body of texts, as they do at Columbia. Because core courses are intended not as intro classes for majors but rather as introductions to different fields for non-majors, the classes are designed to cover a breadth of material and provide both an overview of current questions in the field and key takeaways for students. Students are free to pick their flavor of humanities and social sciences, but they must commit to a full year (or at least two quarters in the case of HUMA) in the same subject sequence. This allows professors to plan course curricula of greater scope and continuity between academic terms.

Furthermore, just as students are allowed to choose among a variety of core sequences, teachers are allowed to pick the core sequences that they would like to teach. This allows for instructors who are passionate about their field to pass on that passion to students, who by self-selection are interested in what the professor has to say. Teachers are still bound to teaching from a common set of books, agreed upon in meetings of teachers of each core course, which ensures that all students, even if taught by different instructors, are taught similar concepts and ideas.

The fact that many books are shared among different core sequences adds even greater benefit, as students learn that texts can be read from multiple perspectives. For example, students in three different SOSC core courses may all read the same work by Marx, but one course will emphasize the economic aspects of the text, another will emphasize aspects of political economy, and the third will emphasize Marxist conceptions of history and sociology. Plato might be read in HUMA for theories of ethics and aesthetics while being read in SOSC as a work of legal theory and political science. Coming back to the dorms and dining halls, students, at the same time as they make their pedestrian complaints about grades and the workload, will also discuss the ideas in the texts together and learn from each other about these different perspectives. This last point is really the positive externality that engenders a feeling of intellectual community and makes UChicago’s core worthwhile.

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@ramboacid That was a great post. Thanks

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I like that @ramboacid used the term “positive externality”. Very Chicago school.

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Except I don’t think he or she used it correctly. Externalities are usually unplanned, unintended costs (or benefits) of an activity incurred (enjoyed) by third parties not directly involved in the activity, and therefore not priced into the original transaction. In this case, however, fostering discussion among classmates by giving them a set of shared texts with which everyone has engaged intensely is one of the main goals of having a core curriculum, and very much part of the curriculum’s design. And the people benefiting from that are directly involved in the original activity and paying for it – they are the students in the core classes, and members of the community the core is supposed to foster. So . . . great for the core, and certainly positive, but not exactly an externality.

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Does UChicago charge more to provide educational services than other institutions of comparable selectivity? If it doesn’t, but it provides a distinct curricula and/or environment that fosters the side-effect of greater intellectual engagement among it’s student population (so much so that such conversations happen organically throughout a typical college career at UChicago compared to comparably priced institutions), that probably falls under the definition of “positive externality”.

Not sure about the restriction of having the action unintended or unplanned. Did a steel mill dumping its waste into the river many decades ago not realize what it was doing? Maybe not fully but that’s a quibble over amount of the externality not whether one is occurring.

From what I’ve heard about UChicago from others who work there and/or have sent their children, there are, indeed, positive externalities present.

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Yes, I suppose it’s possible that when Hooker Chemical was paying bargain-basement waste-disposal prices its executives were aware they would eventually be maiming and killing babies. But I hope not.

All of the highly-selective universities offer some kind of special sauce that distinguishes one college from all the others.

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Yes, and interestingly you don’t see much evidence of hedonic pricing among the top institutions. Nor do kids opt “just” for one school. Probably side effects of underpricing more than anything else.

However, from what I understand, the dispensing of knowledge at other top universities can fall prey to being a bit more - well, for lack of a better expression - “quid pro quo”. I pay and show up, you teach me, that’s the end of that. UChicago is supposed to be over and above that more transactional understanding of the term “college education”. Basing this off of 30 years of anecdotes - both complimenting and criticizing UChicago for this trait.

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As for the negative externalities, again the issue is the amount, not the existence.

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Fun and informative thread.

Question: Can someone explain, in as much detail as she or he is willing, the size of the core classes / sections, who teaches these classes / sections, and style of teaching in these classes / sections (discussion seminar versus lecture)? Assume a student planning to major in humanities or social sciences, not math or hard science.

And quality of grad student faculty - are grad students appreciated by the university for the quality of their teaching?

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@Lea111:

Discussion classes are capped at 19 or less (on a totally unrelated note, 6% of US News’s ranking is calculated from the percent of classes with less than 20 students in it). Lectures can vary, but they don’t get super huge. The largest lecture hall on campus can only hold 200 people in it, and it’s used more for classes like intro chem and intro poli sci than core classes. Your required Calc class, for example, will be about the same size as a high school calc class - I think the cap is usually around 30 and they’re usually smaller. Art, Civ, and Bio lectures tend to be a bit bigger, hovering around 50. Many core classes that are lectures have discussion sections in addition to the lecture that are, again, smaller than 20 people.

Professors, mostly. Occasionally a grad student. But mostly professors. Seriously you get all kinds, I didn’t get a grad student but I knew a few people who did. Some professors I had were literally just hired, some had been there for a few years, and some had been there for ages. The vast majority of the instructors put a huge amount of effort into teaching the core classes, it isn’t treated as a last minute afterthought they gave to the grad students to give them something to do.

Depends. Mostly they are discussions, but a few (like the bio core) are mostly taught as lectures. Since most of the core can be completed in slightly different ways, there are often multiple styles you can complete it in. The class I took for the art core was a discussion. My friend took a performance class taught in a studio. Another friend took a lecture taught by a professor that had an additional discussion section once a week supervised by a grad student.

Sosc, Hum, and Civ, the three pillars of the core, are almost entirely discussion classes (and, in my opinion, the discussion class versions of them are generally superior options), though there are a few classes that are lectures with discussions on the side.

In short, yes. http://www.uchicago.edu/about/accolades/32/
There is another award that goes to Professors. http://www.uchicago.edu/about/accolades/35/
Different departments and division have awards for graduate TAs and Professors in addition to the university-wide accolades.

For some reason there is this rumor floating around that UChicago doesn’t care about teaching, probably stemming from its fame as a research powerhouse and the fact that the College has been through some rough times where it was perpetually small, underfunded, and generally neglected. But this couldn’t be further from the present reality. UChicago takes teaching very, very seriously. The overwhelming majority of instructors, grad students included, are extremely passionate about what they’re teaching. The College does an excellent job making sure that the undergraduate experience is never just an afterthought for the instructors, and they try their hardest to give undergraduates the environment of small classes with professors who care a lot about doing a good job that you can usually only find in a liberal arts college.

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Thank you. Very helpful. For me, I don’t think it’s so much that Chicago has a bad rep in my mind re this (relatively speaking, the opposite, actually), but more because of the whole Colleges That Change Lives / pro LAC / anti university / esp anti-high-ranked university movement has drawn attention to the fact that many universities do have large class sizes, little faculty contact, grad students who are too busy and don’t have incentive sto teach well (other than their own intellectual interest or being compassionate), etc. I went to a prominent Ivy League and to U of C for professional degree, and my feeling about my undergrad institution was mixed - not ideal, but maybe better than some. So I’m glad to hear about the grad students and emphasis on teaching. In the end, some of these things are on a spectrum, which is why I ask for details. Some people will say, “my classes are pretty small; none are over 100” and that makes sense to them, in relation to what they know from their friends at even bigger schools. Some will say, there’s a lot of small discussion classes, but then you find out that they mean “after you get to your junior year”. So all this data and informed opinion is useful.

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A grace note to @HydeSnark 's description. The university hires a certain number of recent PhDs specifically to teach in the Core, mainly Hum and Sosc. These are full-time positions, not adjuncts, but they are not “ladder” positions, i.e., they are not going to be considered for tenure in their departments. However, tenured professors often teach in the Core, too. It’s relatively rare that a tenured professor will teach all three quarters of a sequence, but they will teach one quarter.

Your chances of getting a big-name professor in a Core course sometimes depend on which course you are taking. The Greek Thought and Philosophical Perspectives courses have a higher proportion of senior faculty teaching them than, say, Media. At least that was true as of a few years ago.

The grad students teaching in the Core tend to be ABD (all but dissertation), not first- or second-year grad students unless they are TAing for a professor. And often, they are people who have substantially completed their dissertations. They are not newbies. (Note: Grad student TAs I had in college later became department chairs at Harvard, Yale, and Michigan. Don’t look down your nose at grad students!)

Here’s who taught my kids in their Hum and Sosc courses. Definitely a mixed bag:

Kid 1: Hum/Art, two quarters of a Core-only professor she disliked, 1 Art lecture class by a world-famous professor with about 50 people in it and performance elements, one basic drawing class. Sosc: One quarter of a Core-only professor, and two of a hotshot grad student with a bunch of prizes, both of whom she liked.

Kid2: Hum/Art, three quarters of a grad student who had completed his dissertation but was not yet on the job market, and whom my kid worshipped; a 60-person art lecture course he really liked taught by a ladder junior faculty, with a grad-student discussion group TA he loved. Sosc: two quarters of (different) grad students he disliked sandwiched around a world-famous professor who changed his life

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Thanks, JHS.