Next week, faculty members will be asked to vote on a new graduation requirement in “diversity.” Although it might make us feel better, it would be academically irresponsible to approve such a poorly thought-out, ill-defined proposal.
A diversity requirement cannot be imposed before it has been clearly defined.
The Undergraduate Students Association Council admitted its description of a diversity course was “deliberately left ... somewhat vague” because everyone has his or her own definition of “diversity.”
A report to the council offered this definition: “The complexity of diverse communities defined by characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic background, religion, sexual orientation, age and others.” Deciding which courses – and which course instructors – have a “substantial” enough focus on these characteristics is extremely difficult.
Because of this, even several strongly supportive committees could not agree on definitive classifications for many of their candidate courses. The General Education Governance Committee states that courses on its “likely” list may still not qualify for the diversity requirement. The governance committee recently concluded, “We are not yet ready to propose our own criteria.”
The preliminary list of courses classified as “case already made” includes classes on rock and roll, electronic dance music, the American musical, documentaries and pre-Columbian art. While some of these approved courses pertain solely to Americans, other courses relating to different cultures are not included.
Wouldn’t the experiences of Europeans have relevance to diversity? Why are survey courses on the Greeks, the Romans, world literature through the 20th century and the GE Cluster on history of social thought excluded? The academic rationale for why the former courses get diversity credit while the latter do not has never been given.
The faculty cannot responsibly impose a new graduation requirement on all undergraduates (including thousands of transfer students) without specifying the detailed mechanism by which required courses will be selected. We cannot provide the necessary academic guidance for these far-reaching decisions merely by writing a “blank check” to the GE Governance Committee to work it all out in a great hurry.
My service on the committee convinces me that reviewing over 100 new proposals is too complicated and time-consuming to delegate entirely to them.
What’s the solution? The faculty should be given more time for adequate consideration to resolve these issues.
The next problem is that insufficient thought has been given to the impact of this new requirement, on both students and faculty.
The GE review asserts that the proposed requirement is “not likely to have a discernible effect on enrollments in GE courses.” If this were true, then there would be no substantive reason to pass this requirement. Having achieved the public relations goal of honoring diversity studies, there would be no need to drag in the burdensome machinery of a new graduation requirement.
Actually, it is likely that many students are not currently taking any recommended diversity courses. The list has been inflated by including restricted courses, such as those in the Honors Collegium, seminars for majors and the second or third quarters of some courses with enforced prerequisites.
But nobody has checked which students are taking which courses. Because these courses are not spread uniformly across all departments, many students will likely graduate with two or more of them (history students). This would also mean there is a significant number currently graduating with none (natural sciences students).
The enrollment pressure on diversity courses would therefore have to increase, while it decreases for non-diversity GE courses. No planning for these redistributions of resources has been done. The committee’s hopeful assertions that the new requirement will not increase workload for anyone, and that departments which fail to win diversity credit for their courses will not be “penalized,” are unconvincing.
We must first find out how much the diversity course list will alter student course choices. We can publish this list, and see which courses students actually take. Only then will we have data on which to base a decision about a possible requirement.
Malkan is a professor of physics and astronomy.