<p>Some of the above have a political agenda. As a college professor, I would definitely say that the era of “dead white men” studies has passed. The core should, is has been at many institutions, be expanded.</p>
<p>On the subject of aimlessness and lack of career direction- I have observed that this seems directly related to parental income. I graduated from Brown back in the '70’s and have been employed virtually every day of my life since then (including very quick maternity leaves, major surgeries, etc.) </p>
<p>Now that my kids have graduated from college I have observed that when the parents offer credit cards, cars, assistance with rent and cell phones, etc, the kids often drift into extended periods of aimlessness.</p>
<p>GFG- I am willing to bet you a latte that the kids you know come from affluent homes where the parents can afford to indulge their children’s unwillingness to “get a job any job”. So not so much a commentary on Brown, but for sure a commentary on the mores of affluent parenting in today’s culture.</p>
<p>We told our kids that our financial support ended after college graduation (although we’d be happy to store the books, winter coats, etc. while they got situated.) You would be surprised how quickly kids find direction when the bank of Mom and Dad closes up for business after commencement.</p>
<p>That wasn’t our experience in this economy. I did fund a move for my daughter because she could find nothing in NYC (where she lived during college) that would cover her rent, even with a roommate.</p>
<p>We funded a move to Atlanta and she within a week she has almost definitely lined up a job. Our funds did include a car and rent for while.</p>
<p>She could have lived at home, but she was very unhappy, and I got nothing done.</p>
<p>It was a process. At first I had no intention of funding her, but then I did.</p>
<p>As my posts indicate, I’m a recent alum and big Brown booster so take with grains of salt.</p>
<p>I think that one thing Brown does for people if they have the courage to do it is that it gives them a high bar for the rest of their lives in terms of doing personally meaningful things. This is a really tough thing to swing and, an abstraction. You have to really suffer for it and, want it. No silver platter delivery. But, the promise of possibility. </p>
<p>It is different from chasing external rewards be they from BCG, Mckinsey etc. (not that there is anything wrong with that - and many grads do go that way) but, it is a campus culture really about looking inward and, sculpting a life of purpose. If you have the courage. And, that’s always scary. Esp if you just graduated with a degree in latin or greek with bills – but, the lesson from a Brown or Smith ought be: </p>
<p>If you enter Brown etc. curious about something hopefully you leave it with some vague musing about how you’d like to fit that into your life in a way. And, begin to do that in a life consistent with one’s values. </p>
<p>I know we have that granola-hippy rep but, it is really about discovering one’s passion whether it be Rembrandt or robotics. And, having the courage to chase a passion. It’s not easy if you’re deliberate about it. </p>
<p>Most of this is not exclusive to Brown but, it’s a values call. If you are used to slogging through Math I and 6 other courses in a core – you adopt a ‘it’s just a job’ type attitude to life as an impressionable youngster and, that stays and, it leaves a residue. </p>
<p>Frankly, I think that it is a farce that most colleges even think their core programs ground the students in anything at least with respect to the humanities b/c of the knowledge explosion.</p>
<p>I have to say, coming from a middle-class background these struck me as strange ideas of pointy heads at first and, there is a classist element at work in the thinking - but, where there’s a will, there’s a way (to a point). </p>
<p>Last Point: I know I’ll get crap for this but, I have many friends at other regarded schools and, there is something distinct and, qualitatively different to most Brown students.</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with Brown’s open curriculum. Some students absolutely thrive on it and end up taking courses outside of their major and thus achieve the breadth that core curricula or distribution requirements strive for. Other students, however, need to be nudged to take certain type of courses.</p>
<p>Each and every type of curriculum has its advantages and disadvantages. My S had to take courses he had little interest in and did not enjoy taking, but he also took some courses for the sake of fulfilling the Core requirements (a misnomer; it’s more a distribution requirement) and ended up really enjoying them and learning a lot from them. If he met Shawbridge or Mythmom, they could have a decent conversation!</p>
<p>As someone that’s been dragged by the hair through the so-called “canon”, forcing students against their will to take classes they don’t want to take will only make them hate the subject in question even more. I can speak for a lot of college students when I say that I did the bare minimum amount of work in my core curriculum classes that I needed to do to get the grade and not even a second more. And I truly feel that the best part about all those core curriculum classes is not having to take them anymore. Trust me, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the only criteria in my mind when I picked my GE classes were a) which professor was the easiest, and b) which class am I most likely to get an A. Everything else was irrelevant. And to be honest, I would never go back and take another class in the same subject matter again. You simply can’t make a student who’s not interested interested-either they are, or they’re not. The best way to go is to offer up all options, let students choose, and provide an “out” or “safety net”-i.e. P/F option. The GE requirements make students rather risk-averse.</p>
<p>I think open curriculum is better. You can’t force a student who wanted to be a lawyer since he could say “objection” to have any interest in science. Forcing this student to take a science class will only make him dislike science more intensely than before. If a student wants to specialize, they’ll do whatever it takes to do so. If a student wants to take a broad range of courses, they’ll do that too. Core curricula are nothing more than a waste of time (should have been done in high school), a revenue generation tool for universities, and a weight that holds students down like a pile of bricks.</p>
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<p>Also, they had better not be scheduled at 8 o’clock in the morning.</p>
<p>I think most students pick their GE courses in subjects unrelated to their intended majors in the way that this student described. Nevertheless, the forced exposure to multiple subjects may be of some educational value. </p>
<p>The educational plans at U.S. universities vary from a true core (Columbia and a few others) to menu-style distribution and other general education requirements (most places), to a totally open curriculum except for the major (Brown and some others). But in all cases, they include the basic concept that undergraduates should not spend their entire four years completely immersed in a single subject – a concept that notably differs from that in some other countries. </p>
<p>It’s interesting that nobody here seems to object to that basic concept.</p>
<p>When D spent her time abroad in England all her British friends expressed admiration for a liberal arts education and voiced the desire that Britain had same.</p>
<p>Yes, it does seem quaint in our very materialistic world, but truly with professions coming and going interdisciplinary knowledge and the ability to function in a variety if disciplines is becoming essential. The “gentleman’s” liberal arts degree is actually becoming a smart way to have flexibility in a world in which most people will have two or three career changes during their working lives.</p>
<p>I am more effective as an English prof than colleagues who didn’t study science and math. I teach a broader range of courses and am able to teach more cultural perspective. I have been asked to teach units on Chaos Theory in colleagues classes, and teach intellectual history as a background to literature. I teach a course “The Making of the Modern Mind” and teach Darwin, Marx, Freud and Einstein.</p>
<p>If I designed the course we’d read Woolf too or Gertrude Stein, because I think the modern world definitely includes feminism, but, alas, it’s part of a program.</p>
<p>I took my doctoral orals in English and philosophy which also enlivens my critical work. I actually understand Derrida and don’t lightly apply him.</p>
<p>So, my out of discipline ramblings were essential for me. I certainly couldn’t have known that as an undergrad.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I’m sure I would have learned it all myself because I still am.</p>
<p>JHS, as one of my favorite posters, I think you’re being a bit harsh. Different strokes for different folks. Some students want / prefer a core and / or distribution requirements and others want to dive in deep to their own given area from the get-go and would only resent being forced to take a distribution class. Learning is lifelong, so really, what difference does it make if the history major never took a physics course in college because he never stretched himself to do so? If he finds that to be a topic that interests him later in life, he can self-study or go back to school. If he doesn’t – well, then, so be it. I find it hard to believe you are learned about every single area of humanities and science – no one can be, there’s simply too much to learn.</p>
<p>I took distribution classes, some of which were fascinating and some of which were sleepers that I never used again. Ah well. If I had to do it over again, there are areas I would have studied more in depth (art history and music theory). But, you don’t always know that at age 18-19-20. That’s ok, though. It’s not as though the window slams shut once you leave college.</p>
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This begs the question: What is college for, and what are the optimal conditions for learning?</p>
<p>Pizzgirl, I don’t mean to be harsh. As a factual matter, of course you are correct that “some students want/prefer a core and/or distribution requirements and others want to dive in deep from the get-go”. The interesting question to me is, why? </p>
<p>I understand the deep-divers wanting no restrictions, of course. That’s logical. But I think that’s only a pretty small fraction of the students who choose open-curriculum colleges, especially at the elite level. I also understand the attractions of a core (which both my kids wanted, at least before they actually experienced it), which are really what another poster termed “socialization” rather than content. Finally, I understand why university faculties like to promulgate distributional requirements. </p>
<p>What I don’t understand is why any student would actually prefer a distributional system to a no-requirements system (as opposed to not minding it because the student would have no trouble complying in the ordinary course of things). Actually, I think I do understand it. It’s immature, i.e., child-like thinking. That isn’t meant to be judgmental, though, just descriptive.</p>
<p>I am also interested in the signalling/marketing effect of curriculum policy. Given that there’s precious little practical difference for most relevant students between Brownian open curriculum and most other colleges’ modest distributional requirements, does it make a big difference which system a college has in terms of the students it attracts? There, it’s very hard to tell. Brown does seem to attract more of certain types of students – not necessarily including the deep-divers it logically should attract. But I defy anyone to prove that there’s a big difference between the students who choose Williams and those who choose Amherst, which are pretty much Tweeldedum and Tweedledee except for their general education systems.</p>
<p>My son loved Brown, and my other college student loves her core classes at another institution. Different strokes.</p>
<p>I would like to say, again, that, as many of these posts and the articles in the links provided, confirm my feeling that the Brown curriculum is still best suited to those who had quality high school or prep school backgrounds. Many of you (and the articles) justify the Brown curriculum by saying things like “the students at Brown were already well-rounded from high school,” or that many at Brown took so many AP classes in high school that they don’t need a core.</p>
<p>As I said, in the top colleges’ strong (and perhaps transient, with budget situations increasingly dire on campuses) efforts to recruit (with financial aid) more lower income, minority and, most recently, middle class students who are, so to speak, diamonds in the rough, the Brown curriculum may pose problems.</p>
<p>I do think that it is not so much the lack of core, but the lack of survey or introductory courses that is relevant here. The course catalog at Brown offers fascinating classes that are quite specialized, in the manner one would expect to see AFTER survey or intro classes.</p>
<p>A good background in, say, US History is not available to students in every high school, and having that knowledge can greatly inform more specialized studies. This situation also increases stress for students who have been admitted in order to foster the “socioeconomic diversity” agenda that many top colleges have.</p>
<p>There are comprehensive intro courses at Brown, but they are very high level. My son took a political science intro course that was great, and formed the basis for enjoying several more in that field. However, the trend, I would say, is toward interesting courses with narrow focus, rather than a broad look at a field or topic.</p>
<p>Personally, I love this. I think that often, for instance, studying the history of the automobile is a great way to view US history in a meaningful way. It’s fun. But it is even more meaningful for those who have already mastered US History from 1865 to present, for example, who studied industrial/technological progress over a span of centuries. And not everyone has that kind of background.</p>
<p>One more thing: Brown is really quite rigorous. Freedom of choice and rigor are not mutually exclusive by any means, in fact, quite the opposite. But making those good choices can require a certain socioeconomic/educational background, which can make Brown seem a little elitist at times.</p>
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<p>It doesn’t seem any more immature to me than many of the things that 18 yo’s evaluate colleges on – a general “feel” that may be unduly influenced by the personality of the tour guide, or the weather that day, or seeing too many kids dressed in a style that isn’t personally appealing (whether that’s preppy or goth or anywhere in between), or the demeanor of a clerk at the admissions office (whom you’d never see again if you went there), or the quality of the food.</p>
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<p>That, I think, is a really fair point. Sometimes a kid might really just want a really good European history survey course at a college level.</p>
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<p>With all due respect, though, I think that may be a function of the already-elite talking to the already-elite. I daresay many kids who are considering Brown along with other similar-caliber schools aren’t always evaluating it from that perspective, but rather along other criteria (overall feel, athletics, culture, do they like Providence, etc.). At least (anecdote alert) that’s the case with the 2 hs seniors I know who are seriously considering Brown. It’s not “all other colleges” on one side and “Brown” on the other.</p>
<p>Brown offers plenty of survey courses.</p>
<p>Blossom, you’re correct. I told my children that we are much too middle class to feel comfortable with the thought that they’d be spending their formative college years surrounded by oodles of affluent students who have no pressing need to find employment after graduation. And the musings of fredmurtz2 further confirm my concept of the Brown student. Introspection about how to achieve a life of purpose is fine so long as that occurs a PART of one’s life. The Brown students I know make introspection their “career”, hence their leaves of absence to find themselves while working on an organic farm in Costa Rica and things of that nature. What I will give you, is that Brown seems singularly well-suited for producing talented students who want to work for non-profits.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, of course it’s not any more immature than looking at food quality, tour-guide wardrobe choice, or bathroom configuration. In fact, it’s LESS immature than those things, since at least it involves thinking about something important, like curriculum. I am waaaaay harsher on kids who let bathroom configuration influence their college preferences, absent some really unique individual issue.</p>
<p>I also acknowledge that it’s fine if students use criteria I consider dumb to narrow down their lists, as long as they don’t narrow themselves out of all appropriate good options.</p>
<p>However, in a conversation among parents (even if the kids are listening in), can’t we call a spade a spade, and an immature thought process immature?</p>
<p>As for caring about elites talking to elites: guilty, I guess.</p>
<p>GFG–</p>
<p>If you don’t want your D to apply to Brown, that’s fine. But I don’t know why you think the Brown student body is more “entitled” and less likely to look for employment immediately post-employment than the student body at other top private colleges and universities. </p>
<p>One of Brown’s most popular concentrations is one that is a quasi-business major. Brown also has a heck of a lot of pre-meds and sends a lot of students off to law school. There is a substantial group of artsy kids–but most of these DO seek employment immediately. Sometimes, though, it’s not immediately lucrative. That’s the nature of the beast. </p>
<p>There was a time when Brown was not need blind. That is no longer the case, and hasn’t been for some time. I don’t know the stats for this year’s frosh class, but according to the Pro(vidence)Jo(urnal) in an article in Jan. 2008 which I just found via google, at that point 43% of the freshman class was on financial aid. </p>
<p>There are a substantial number of “trust fund babies” at all top colleges. In many cases, the amount of income they derive from the trust is not sufficient for them to avoid working. It may mean, however, that they feel more free to take lower-paying, “fullfilling” work than kids who have to pay back student loans do. </p>
<p>In my own–admittedly anecdotal experience–the real “slackers” are found at large public Us which allow students to hang around and stretch their course-taking to 6 or 7 years. Yes, there are students who do this because they HAVE to for financial reasons–but there are plenty who do it because they enjoy the ambience of college, particularly the social life, and are in no particular hurry to graduate.</p>
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<p>I would totally take an 8AM every single day if the professor gave out A’s like candy.</p>
<p>Actually, I also choose my major classes based on which professor is easiest and which class am I most likely to get an A. For some people, college is a means to law/med/business/grad school. It’s not an end in and of itself.</p>