Amid Calls for Change, College Majors Seem Fixed – Curriculum – The Chronicle of Higher Education

A couple of interesting articles about curriculum reform have recently appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  The first is about the remarkable stability of the university curriculum, for better or worse.

Remarkably little about this system has changed during the last 60 years. Bachelor’s degrees, regardless of the field of study, are almost all based on four years in the classroom. A handful of new majors are beginning to emerge on college campuses, and interdisciplinary programs like women’s studies and environmental science have found a niche, but the basic constellation of college majors has been highly stable.

At community colleges and in graduate schools, new specialized degrees come and go all the time in response to market demands, scientific innovations, and emerging social problems. Baccalaureate majors are much more firmly fixed. (According to federal statistics, the top 10 bachelor’s-level fields of study in 2006-7 were the same as those of 1980-81, albeit in a different order.)

The article then goes on the survey movements for curricular change and finds a growing realization of the importance of as well as the interest in more interdisciplinary studies.  Enrollment in interdisciplinary programs is increasing exponentially.

Equally intriguing is an article about five up-and-coming interdisciplinary programs that are seeing growth.

1) Service Science
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3) Computational Science

4) Sustainability

5) Public Health

NITLE – Internationalizing Curricula in the Sciences

This is the description for a program I have organized to take place in our multipoint interactive videoconferencing system (Elluminate) on September 10.  I’m quite looking forward to it.  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, a global education is more important than ever, and technology provides is invaluable tools to help provide it, right across the curriculum.  Places were still available when last I checked, so if you are interested, more details and registration information is here.

While an understanding of ones place within a global community is increasingly considered a core value of a liberal arts education, students in the sciences are less likely to participate in study abroad programs and take fewer electives outside their major or related disciplines. The reasons for this are varied and complex, but the problem must be addressed. In this presentation Mark Stewart, chair of the department of psychology, Willamette University, and Stas Stavrianeas, professor of exercise science, Willamette University, will present their strategies for helping students better understand other cultures and increasing the number of students opting to pursue study abroad, strategies that rely heavily on increased ease of access to global media, interactivity of new technology and innovative pedagogical strategies.

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via NITLE – Internationalizing Curricula in the Sciences .