<p>I may be off by a number of classes or two, but my son's engineering program requires two English/Composition, three Humanities, and three Social Sciences; the rest is all math, science, engineering.</p>
<p>Not a whole lot, but how many maths or sciences would someone majoring in English, Humanities, or Social Science take?</p>
<p>Don't believe all the nonsense you may have read about Columbia being "left wing." Sure, apparently there is a vocal segment of the Columbia community that's on the fringes, but [notwithstanding new President Lee Bollinger] I've always found the administration, and more than a few students, to be conservative. The YAFs were quite active when I was an undergraduate. Remember, we are talking about the biggest landlord in New York, commerical and residential. </p>
<p>As for the core curriculum, it has great value, but in this day and age, it's not for everyone, as Marite and WashDad said.</p>
<p>I have no idea what the Harvard Curricular Review will yield, but for the moment, the Core curriculum is very roughly as follows (Expository Writing is mandatory and is not part of the Core:
2 Literature & Arts (the two chosen from 3 subsets, divided roughly between literature, visual and music); 2 history; 1 moral reasoning; 1 quantitative reasoning; 2 sciences (1 biological and 1 physical); 1 social analysis. Depending on their fields, students can be exempted from one or more requirements. For example, S will not have to take quantitative reasoning or physical science. And some courses can count for the major, such as in History.</p>
<p>About left wing/right wing, one of the most pedagogically conservative profs I have ever known is a self-avowed Marxist. He's the only one who invoked the sanctity of tradition against any attempt at reform. And then he'd go off and rail against capitalism and imperialism.</p>
<p>CMU's school of computer science in requires a writing course, three breadth courses one from each of three areas and four more humanities/social science courses. The three breadth areas are "Cognition, Choice, Behavior", "Economic, Political and Social Institutions" and "Cultural Analysis". They are also required to have a minor which may or may not be science/computer related.</p>
<p>I have a real problem with PB's assertion that colleges are short changing its students by not REQUIRING a core curriculum ala Columbia.</p>
<p>I am not suggesting that a core curriculum is bad, just that all students are different in what they desire from their college education. I have a feeling that our DS would dispise such a restraint on his choice of intellectual exploration. I know that in his jr year he decided to add a philosophy minor and explore a specialty area in his compsci major more in depth. A core curriculum would possibly have made these academic choices impossible or difficult.</p>
<p>However I do think that all colleges of Arts and Sciences should offer a suggested core curriculum ala Columbia for it students and offer advisors who are equipped to counsel students making this choice. I am quite certain that essentially all universities and LAC's offer courses that would accomplish this purpose and if not, expand course offering accordingly.</p>
<p>My son chose Yale, in part, because of the freedom to choose whatever classes he wants. So what is he taking his first semester as a Freshman? Ancient Greek, History of Greece, Latin, Ancient philosophy and Constitutional Law. He likes his "dead white men."</p>
<p>My D- for whom Evergreen had been a first choice for years- decided to go to Reed- where they also like their * dead-caucasian males*.
But it wasn't so much that they read Aristophanes and Thuycides- but that all freshmen take the same course & that course gives them a common background and grounding in perspective to then explore other areas.</p>
<p>College is to learn enough about different fields ( IMO) so that you can understand relationships and how things change and affect each other.
While people obviously do declare majors in most colleges- Grad and post doc work is where you can get very specialized.
College still should be a broad base of history-geography/science/math/english- and the arts
If you really want to specialize go to a vocational program- ( like me)
;)</p>
<p>Burnthis,</p>
<p>Your son may be unusual, but I would not trust most 18 year olds to know what they should or want to learn. One of the advantages of core curricula is that it forces student to go out of their comfort zone, to be exposed to disciplines they would otherwise perhaps not even be aware of.</p>
<p>Note that I use "core" here to mean a common base of learning, not a common base of learning just focused on the classical humanities disciplines, as it has come to mean in all too many settings.</p>
<p>Burnthis,
I managed to graduate from Smith College without taking any English, Math, Science, Art or Music. The only requirement then was two years of gym and demonstrating an ability to climb out of a fourth-floor dorm window in the event of fire. I took mostly history, poli sci and foreign languages with a junior year in Europe. Ok, I'm a successful lawyer who speaks four languages but I truly feel that I've spent the last 25 years educating myself. I'm not sure that I would have gone to law school if I'd explored more widely. My college "advisor" didn't make even a peep at my course selections.
I hope that my two teenage sons get a broader college education.</p>