Course Reduction

Included in the proposals for the upperclass curriculum which the faculty approved yesterday was a very pleasant and vague endorsement of the course reduction program. Nevertheless, the final effect of the changes, which on the whole should stimulate independent study, could paradoxically and harmfully limit the opportunities for course reduction.

In general, the new educational policy will have honors candidates take two years of tutorial for credit and schedule only fourteen formal courses instead of the present fifteen. The greater emphasis placed on tutorial work is an encouraging move; but, with only fourteen courses in which to satisfy distribution requirements and accumulate enough required knowledge for general examinations, the able student considering course reduction might be fearful of dropping a further course.

Furthermore, tutorial for credit does not offer every capable student desiring to do independent work the same opportunities as would free study under the course reduction program. The physicist who would like to take time out to study a certain literary epoch, or the English major who might want to do a project outside his field cannot study in his own department's tutorial. Tutorial for credit is, also, essentially a graded course, and the student may feel less free to explore interesting sidelines to his work if he feels pressure to earn a high grade.

Course reduction study, of course, necessitates trust on the faculty's part that a student will put in honest work at his project. Students who win departmental approval and the permission of the Advanced Standing Office have, however, normally proved their merit and scholastic maturity. According to a recent poll answered by the approximately fifty students working with course reduction, practically all of the group concurred that independent study had been one of their most stimulating academic experiences. Aside from the intrinsic value of what they had learned, most found the opportunity for unsupervised work highly rewarding. The course reduction program thus certainly merits encouragement.

It is up to the individual departments to decide policy on course reduction for their own students. The director of the Committee on Advanced Standing, Edward T. Wilcox, hopes, though, both that the General Education Committee will consider counting independent study projects outside a student's field of concentration toward fulfilling distribution requirements and that the various departments might credit course reduction projects within the student's field toward concentration. This system is certainly worth a try, for it offers to counteract any tendency that course reduction might be squeezed out. The program, otherwise, may cease to offer an attractive option for the capable student who feels he is too pressed by examination and course requirements to work independently. Course reduction has proved a noble experiment, and the faculty should take every opportunity to advance a program which allows the mature student an opportunity for adult education.