I graduated quite awhile ago (1993), but I felt like the open curriculum encouraged me to take more risks and step outside my comfort zone. I’m a humanities person, but I took courses in STEM disciplines purely out of interest. I had room in my schedule to double-concentrate and still graduate on time. And all concentrations have requirements (often beyond the department), even if there’s no core curriculum, so students still have to take courses in a range of disciplines. It all works out.
Also – when I was in college, it seemed as if Brown’s curriculum was unusual. But these days, quite a few colleges offer an open (or nearly open) curriculum. If the idea has caught on, it must be working.
Or would you include the semi-open ones where there is a limit on the number or percentage of courses in one department, or one general area (humanities, social science, science)? (e.g. Grinnell, Hamilton)
I guess I would say there is a spectrum from a very circumscribed core curriculum to a non-existent one (though even Brown has a couple of required writing courses). I would say that the scales have shifted toward open, or variations on that theme, at least among elite SLACS and liberal arts universities.