Undergraduate Education Becomes More Specialized

This year, as Core curriculum reform took center stage in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, observers often noted that Core courses comprise one-quarter of every undergraduate's course load.

However, there is another set of requirements in the undergraduate curriculum that is even more sizable--the set of courses taken for concentration credit.

In the last 50 years, students have seen their choices of where to devote about half their academic time at the College expand.

While an odd concentration has bit the dust--Geology and Geography was absorbed decades ago--many more have sprung up to fill the gaps--Environmental Science and Public Policy (ESPP), Afro-American Studies, Computer Science and Women's Studies are all relatively new offerings.

At the same time, the individual concentrations have undergone transformations.

The concentrations have shifted or eliminated requirements, encouraged more study with other disciplines and introduced specialized tracks--steps which most Faculty members say give students more flexibility within their chosen fields than ever.

"[Students] are going to find their own way to concentrate on their own interests," says Professor of English and Comparative Literature James T. Engell '73 who is also director of undergraduate studies for the Department of English and American Literature and Language.

Specialization

Many, including Associate Professor of Government Michael G. Hagen, head tutor of the Department of Government, worry that "forcing students to declare [a concentration] at the end of their freshman year is a little bit on the early side," yet students seem to be specializing earlier in their academic careers.

Hagen suggests that a number of factors may be contributing to the trend, including disagreements about what works make up a canon of knowledge, encouragement to think about senior theses early on and increasing specialization in the research interests of Faculty.

As undergraduates increasingly focuse on very specific course tracks, there are many signs that specialization is increasing in academics as a whole.

Buell says that Faculty members began narrowing their scholarly focus years ago.

"In university culture, there has been for some decades, and there I think will continue to be, a tendency in the research life of faculty toward specialization," he says.

Within the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Head Tutor James E. Davis says the increased specialization is a natural development of the discipline.

"Fifty years ago, each field was its own area," Davis says. "The field has matured to the point where we see these interdependent relationships."

Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Wolcowitz says he believes that undergraduates have followed the trend of Faculty members.

"Student are more like the Faculty in the move to specialize within their fields," Wolcowitz says. "What is in the water for Faculty is also in the water for students."

Outgoing Dean of Undergraduate Education David Pilbeam says that the move towards academic specialization is linked to the expansion of graduate programs in the 1960s, a time he calls "an era of expansion and segmentation."

"[Academics were concerned with] the production of new knowledge," he says. "With more people having to produce new knowledge, they had to define new niches."

Wolcowitz says the specialization of Faculty research interests led to specialization in course instruction as well.

"There's less of a sense that the pinnacle in the field is to be able to teach a broad survey course, but to teach the narrow, specialist course, to be on the cutting edge," he says.

Yet Buell says that as Faculty members focus their work in an effort to carve out an academic niche, they are becoming more cognizant of the pit-falls that come a tremendous academic division of labor.

"At the same time, another trend line that I've seen...is deparochialization--that is, an increasing awareness that you cannot do work that is considered important by your peers if you tunnel yourself into a small enclave," Buell says.

Specialization also poses a threat to the historic notion that undergraduates should study a classical canon of knowledge.

A petition signed by more than 100 English concentrators last month called in part for reforms of the general exam which many seniors, including Emily J. Wood '97, say they felt assumed "a fixed canon of text we should know, when the department all along has been telling us [otherwise]."

Buell says he believes that the classical canon is dying because scholars have differing ideas of what the canon should be.

"Professional and pedagogical life is moving away from a canonization model towards what you might call a conversational model or a model of competition within which different perspectives have play," he says.

Interdisciplinary Studies

Another curious trend is that while specialization has been on the rise, interdisciplinary studies have also been increasing.

The ESPP concentration is a combination of both trends. The focus on environmental issues encourages specialization early on in an undergraduate's academic career.

Yet the concentration is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing upon Faculty from various departments. The centerpiece of the concentration is a junior tutorial program that is "designedly synthetic, designedly cross-disciplinary," according to Buell.

Much of the recent interest in cross-disciplinary studies can be credited to President Neil L. Rudenstine, whose five interfaculty initiatives have encouraged interdisciplinary study across the University.

ESPP is the only concentration thus far to come of the initiatives. The mind, brain and behavior initiative has created new neuroscience tracks in biology, psychology, computer science and history and science.

A third initiative, the Project on Schooling and Children, has been expressed interest in initiating a concentration in "children's studies."

Studies across departments are not new. Michael Herzfeld, head tutor in the Department of Anthropology, says his field is inherently interdisciplinary.

"As a concentration, it's as good an introduction to the overall liberal arts view of the world as you can take," he says. "Anthropology has always been this way."

And the department allows for students to focus on subfields, offering tracks in archaeology, biological anthropology and social anthropology.

"The choice really rests with the students," Herzfeld says, referring to the degree of specialization in the department.

Decrying the Trend

Many Faculty members question whether it is healthy for undergraduates to specialize early in their academic careers.

Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures William M. Todd III, who will also become dean of undergraduate education next month, says he believes specialization is related to increased preprofessionalism among undergraduates, and is a threat to the pursuit of the liberal arts education Harvard offers.

"I think it is unfortunate that students feel these pressures upon what is, after all, a very precious four years of their lives, when they can explore the world of the mind," Todd says.

Herzfeld says he believes that academic institutions such as Harvard must be vigilant in protecting against professionalism.

"There has to be a place where education can stand for its own space," he says.