Gen Ed Course Shuffling Leaves Students Confused

Confusion over the status of Soc Sci 111 and the loss of a pair of lower level cpurses have sent students trooping into the office of Donald R. Brown, executive secretary to the Committee on General Education, seeking solutions to their scheduling headaches.

Brown said yesterday that the elimination of Nat Sci 4 and Soc Sci 4 has produced "somewhat greater pressure" to get into other Nat Sci and Soc Sci courses.

He noted that with the Faculty caught up in the debate over a new General education program, this fall is "not a good time" to introduce new lower level courses to replace the two that are not being offered this year.

A number of students planned on taking Soc Sci 111, "History of East Asian Civilization," after it was reported in April that the course might be counted as a lower level Social Sciences course, Brown said.

It was subsequently decided. Brown said to admit 100 freshmen to the course "for experimental purposes" and to give lower level general education credit only to them. Upperclassmen will not receive lower level credit for the course.

Not an Inequity

"The natural way for many of these students to look at it is that a choice has been denied them, and that an inequity has been imposed," Brown said. "It wasn't intentional, however."

If the professors teaching Soc Sci 111 decide at the end of the year that freshmen can handle the course's material, Brown continued, it will be offered as a lower level course in 1966-67.

Brown said the new General Education plan proposed by the Committee on Educational Policy would alleviate the course shortage caused by the loss of Nat Sci 4 and Soc Sci 4.

There's no question that it will," he said. "The crucial aspect is the number offerings involved."

Brown said the additional courses would give the student greater flexibilty in finding a way to meet his requirements.