I’ve seen it mentioned MANY times on CC.
Having a core requirement personally doesn’t seem odd to me. Then again, my years in college were decades so. But there have been several posts that I’ve seen on CC over the years where this requirement seems to be of interest. That’s why I asked the OP.
Even when the context is not Columbia or Chicago?
Fair point. Maybe it’s just come up in the context of those two schools. I honestly don’t remember except that I always wondered (without questioning) why it seemed to be an issue. I guess, as most have stated here, it’s a question of degree.
The core came up in my household when discussing Catholic colleges.
Those were actually the skills to which I was referring. You don’t need to take an explicit writing course to develop writing or communication skills nor do you need to take a math course to develop analytical skills. The development of those skills can be incorporated into whatever courses a student takes for their major. It’s all about curriculum design.
One would argue that “biomedical” anything is not a core requirement. If a student wants to choose a course like that to explore in college they are certainly free to do so but it shouldn’t be a mandatory course.
One more reminder that debating is not permitted.
Those are all courses that are generally offered at the high school level and there are typically requirements for graduation that students have take a number of courses from the arts and social sciences.
No one is arguing that students should not be able to take subjects outside of their course of study to explore other topics. The question is should the student be free to choose whatever courses they want as electives or should the school dictate to some degree what those courses should be?
Might I remind members of the forum rules:
“College Confidential forums exist to discuss college admission and other topics of interest. It is not a place for contentious debate. If you find yourself repeating talking points, it might be time to step away and do something else… If a thread starts to get heated, it might be closed or heavily moderated.”
Remember too that not all high schools offer the same courses at the same level. This ensures that the inequality coming in isn’t reflected in grads.
A core, in some part, protects the reputation of the college. This is pretty important if alums are saying, yeah I majored in French at XYZ, but I can do math and am a good thinker and writer.
To put it differently, when a student doesn’t complete a vocational degree, it signals an ability to think and mastery of certain types of thinking.
Whether this is why schools do it, well that’s a different thing!
Yes, that’s how it came up in our household too. My kid will be attending a Jesuit school with a very large core. The core was not something my kid desired, especially after a rigorous IB program in high school that had a lot of required classes and essentially no room for electives. Still, the school was a decent fit in other ways (location and price) so he chose it in the end after really researching the core and deciding it was something he was “willing to live with.” Who knows, maybe he will even like it.
Ah, that is the directly relevant question for my D! She too is in the IB Dip program and feels that she’s already covered (or will cover by senior year) many of the kinds of courses that gen ed/core requires.
Depends on the content of the core. For example, Columbia’s Core does not include a math (or similar, like statistics) course, and the science requirement allows for courses like one that is actually titled Physics for Poets.
On the other hand, it is reasonable to expect that a Columbia BA/BS graduate has had a decent exposure to humanities.
Chicago’s Core requires one mathematical sciences course, but AP statistics can fulfill it (like at many other colleges).
While skills can be included my basic point was, taking an assortment of different classes lets students learn about subjects which they did NOT get to take during high school.
Well TOS says no arguing. But biomedical was used as an example of a course not offered. No one mentioned any course being mandatory.
The point big here was/is, kids don’t get exposed to big subjects they might like and might go into, I did and so did many others I know from college. There are many esoteric fields in which it’s very unlikely to have any course in high school. And there are many fields which are pretty mainstream, like biomedical engineering in which it’s probably unlikely to have a K-12 course.
Yes. I don’t know how the core curriculum has changed at my alma mater, but it was put in place to ensure that graduates had the basic requisite skills so a graduate didn’t show up and not be able to do basic tasks. I think that factor makes it still relevant. Even thought it’s no longer really a thing at most schools.
Given what college costs, I wouldn’t push core curriculum on my kids. But, I would make sure that if my kids narrow their focus from Day 1, that they also have the other soft skills they need to succeed.
M
Colleges that didn’t require foreign language went way to the top of D22s list. 3 years of Spanish was enough for her. A foreign language requirement wouldn’t have been a deal breaker but it definitely was a big con. She ended up at a Jesuit school but in a program that allows her to skip foreign language requirement.
I loved that my college allowed me to drop one core area- Science was never my thing.
One could argue that most four year colleges in the US have a very basic core curriculum, typically consisting of one or two English composition courses (though they may offer those with varying subject matter, rather than only fictional literature as is the norm in high school) and possibly one math course (though usually at the level of AP statistics or precalculus), in addition to various general education requirements. However, there are colleges at the extremes of no subject requirements at all (Evergreen State) to having a core curriculum that is the entire curriculum (St. John’s College).
Generally the core at many places leans towards humanities than towards the sciences. For example most college educated people are expected to know Shakespeare, but are not expected to know the second law of thermodynamics. Even if there is some exposure to the sciences, it is very watered down.
Interesting. Our requirements affected about 25% of courses. And there were many more requirements including FL, writing, math and science. And there was a course (or maybe two) that everyone had to take. It was eventually removed. It had a programming component.
You can imagine how well that went over with English majors.
Many of the schools my oldest looked at, had a decent core curriculum. Much lighter than my college. But, it seemed designed to get students to try things in various fields. The issue for our kid, was getting the right fit ( enough core courses to whet your whistle in many subjects but not too many that you were committed to taking courses of zero interest just for the requirement).
My guess is, it’s harder to design and implement a core curriculum than it might seem. No one can agree with what goes in and stays in.