<p>I don’t expect to find a perfect correlation between an open curriculum and reduced interest in science/math, or distribution requirements and increased interest. There are no perfect correlations in this business. </p>
<p>But I think that if we start tabulating different LACs and student interest in science/math, we will probably find that (1) women’s colleges, and (2) coed LACs with open curricula will tend to appear in the lower part of the list, and that (3) coed LACs with distribution requirements will tend to appear in the upper part of the list.</p>
<p>There will surely be exceptions to all of these rules. Bryn Mawr is a women’s college with a lot of science/math majors. Grinnell has an open curriculum and a lot of science/math majors. Middlebury has distribution requirements and relatively few science/math majors. But I suspect that an overall pattern will still be evident. </p>
<p>Everyone can surely agree that an open curriculum is beneficial to those who want to avoid taking science or math courses. Is it unreasonable to suggest that it could have the opposite effect to those with the opposite inclination?</p>
Probably not. And it’s probably true that the relatively large Environmental Studies program at Middlebury does draw some students who would otherwise be science/math majors. </p>
<p>But I would be reluctant to include environmental studies majors in the tally, because at most schools that offer it (including Midd), this major is only partly science-oriented. That’s why schools typically use the name “environmental studies,” and not “environmental sciences”. </p>
<p>Even if it was included, Midd would probably still be in the Amherst range, rather than in the Williams range – despite the fact that it is not a “open-curriculum” school. I would guess that this discrepancy reflects Midd’s traditional reputation as a great LAC for languages and writing.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’ve always looked at environmental studies as “science lite” -but I admittedly haven’t taken a close look at any specific curriculum and would be happy to stand corrected after hearing from someone who has. This from the father of a son who is very interested in biology and environmental studies.</p>
<p>The longer list I posted is from the IPEDs database which uses the “industry standard” list of departments or fields. Science is either “Biological and Health Sciences” or “Physical Sciences”, so I strongly suspect that it captures all the hyrbrids like Bio Chem and so forth in one category or another. Swarthmore has a significant number of graduates in those majors and the IPEDS appears to have captured it quite well.</p>
<p>I did not include the Environmental category in the custom report, so I probably shortchanged Middlebury. I didn’t incude it because the category includes fisheries, wildlife management, forestry, etc. I was trying to stay consistent with the data Corbett had already put together. I just checked. Adding in the “Natural Resources and Conservation” field bumps Middlebury up to 16%.</p>
<p>As for the correlation between core curriculum and %math/science majors, I’m pretty sure Reed is around 1/3, and they have a substantial core (and a nuclear reactor).</p>
<p>Since I currently have daughters at both Brown & Amherst who specifically chose the schools with the open curriculum in mind as a priority, I thought Id provide my own perspective here…</p>
<p>My Brown senior is a math & economics major. Her transcript reveals difficult courses that are spread among a variety of subjects that would satisfy distribution requirements at most colleges.</p>
<p>My Amherst freshman expects to major in math & biology. Shes currently taking multi variable calculus among her other science, music, and humanities courses. I expect that she too will take a broad range of courses that dont demonstrate a lopsided transcript.</p>
<p>Since both girls received perfect scores on a variety of math & science SAT & AP tests, they certainly dont fall into any category that stereotypes students in an open curriculum as math & science averse. In fact, like most of their friends at these schools, they hyper-excelled in a variety of areas including music and sports during high school.</p>
<p>Both schools were chosen after careful review of the math departments. Math departments at most colleges have issues of one sort or another because math majors are generally rare compared with other subjects. Though the Amherst department is indeed small, thus far, all indications point to the possibility of an excellent education. And there are potential pluses to go along with the minuses. Of course, a small department does mean fewer courses in a smaller variety of subject areas.</p>
<p>Finally, the # of majors in hard sciences at these schools doesnt necessarily correspond to the concept that English & History majors rarely or never take science courses at these schools. So, though there are undoubtedly students who avoid math & science at places like Amherst, a quick look at the schools SAT breakdown should get across the point that the school generally accepts students who excel in multiple areas. And none of the students I know personally at Brown or Amherst fall into the purported categories discussed in this thread.</p>
Maybe this is a dumb question, but given that your daughters have wide-ranging interests (good for them) and have (or will) take courses in a variety of departments (again, good for them) – then why was the open curriculum a priority ?</p>
<p>Or to put it another way: what is the downside of schools with distribution requirements, if your course selection will be broad enough to fufill distribution requirements anyway ?</p>
No, but that seems to be the way that it works at Amherst. The info in Amherst’s latest accreditation report (see post #19 above) indicates that only 56% of students in the Classes of 2002-2006 took a math or computer science course, and only 44% took a lab science course. Those figures include the math/science majors, so obviously the numbers would be even lower for majors in other disciplines.</p>
<p>Based on the available data, it would seem that Amherst has both a low number of math/science majors (at least relative to other top LACs), and relative disinterest in math/science among the humanities majors.</p>
<p>Ideally, youd have to ask them that. But, especially with the younger one, she was willing to make other sacrifices to attend an open curriculum school.
If I had to sum it up on their behalf, Id guess they wanted to maximize their control in order to take what they wanted when they wanted with the widest possible degree of freedom but that doesnt necessarily mean they believe distribution requirements are inherently bad. They simply chose the option of being free of such constraints. I know my oldest daughter will graduate Brown wishing shed had time to take other courses that interested her. Imagine how she might feel if shed missed an opportunity to take a class she coveted in order to fulfill someone elses concept of what she needed to learn </p>
<p>Isnt your use of the word disinterest an assumption based on the stats? For instance, Amherst doesnt award credit for A.P.s. Do you know which kids took A.P. Calculus and A.P. Chemistry in High School and decided that now theyd devote the fleeting time they have at Amherst to other pursuits? And is that inherently bad? These are very bright kids many of whom will educate themselves in a variety of subjects.</p>
<p>Jessica got a 5 on the A.P. Physics test. Suppose she doesnt take any additional Physics courses at Amherst. Your #s only tell us that she didnt take the course at Amherst not whether shes using the open curriculum concept as a crutch. In fact, I think that looking at students who chose to go to Amherst through the lens provided by these numbers simply leaves us with a skewed view of the school and tells us little about how knowledgeable students actually are in a variety of disciplines.</p>
<p>Most of the adults I know dont retain the information they dont use. In the remote past, I learned Spanish, lived in Guadalajara, Mexico, and spoke the language. Now, I barely remember a word. If you force a student to take a math course for the sake of providing a broader education and the student never uses the knowledge and cant help his or her own kids with their homework in that subject years later precisely what have you achieved? (Of course, if you can get students excited about classes outside their comfort zones, thats a different story.) </p>
<p>Regardless, I was simply providing my own experience and that of my daughters.</p>
<p>The question is not whether the open curriculum is inherently “good” or “bad”. No one is denying that Amherst can offer whatever curriculum it sees fit. </p>
<p>The question is whether the open curriculum has any particular effects. Hence the title of this thread: “So how’s that open curriculum going?”. In particular, the Original Poster asked if Amherst students, given complete freedom to choose courses, tended to avoid particular disciplines.</p>
<p>This is a perfectly fair question. It deserves an answer. </p>
<p>The reality seems to be that Amherst students do, in fact, tend to avoid math and science courses. They are also less likely to major in math or science, at least relative to peer institutions like Williams or Swarthmore. Both of these facts are consistent with the hypothesis that the open curriculum is disproportionately attractive to applicants who do not want to study math or science in college.</p>
<p>Given that math and science departments at Amherst have relatively few majors and low non-major enrollment, it is not surprising to find that math/science faculty numbers are low (again relative to Williams and Swarthmore), and that renovation of the science facilities has been postponed for decades. These seem like significant effects. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Youre taking liberties by alternately spinning and ignoring my comments. I believe I made my point for anyone who chooses to read this thread. Youve reiterated yours quite a few times. And seem to have a great deal invested in arguing with me. Im not even disagreeing with you. Ive simply provided my familys experiences as a counterpoint to your generalizations. Perhaps you should write us off as an anomaly? After all, to answer the question you posed again in post #54: Its going just fine. Thats my reality.</p>
<p>I believe Ive said all I care to on the subject . So Take care!</p>
<p>I’m sorry if I offended you, because I’m not disagreeing with you either. My comments are, as you indicate, generalizations – rather sweeping ones in fact. And sweeping generalizations are not necessarily valid or useful for particular individuals, especially exceptional ones.</p>
<p>I think I’m done too. So … you take care as well.</p>
<p>I think the real reason fewer people here are math/science majors is the difference in class time between math/science classes and humanities/social sciences.</p>
<p>Most intro level science classes have 9 hours of class time per week, and meet 4 times per week. This contrasts with the roughly 3 hours of class time for humanities and social science classes.</p>
<p>If Amherst really wants more math/science majors, they need to do something to reward people for putting in the extra time in class in science classes. 1 credit for both Chem 15 and an interpretive dance class that meets twice a week just doesn’t seem fair.</p>
<p>My son, who is strong at math and science and is quite dyslexic, likes Amherst because he does not have to take a foreign language (a couple of the schools he got into had fairly onerous decision-making processes for deciding whether the requirement would be waived and would not do so until he’d become a freshman) and can organize his courses so he has one heavy reading/writing course per semester instead of three, which might be needed to meet other schools’ distribution requirements. Although he doesn’t plan to be a math major, I think he’ll probably take math all the way through college.</p>
<p>So, here’s another example of the open curriculum’s use that doesn’t reduce math or science exposure.</p>