CUE Is Considering Removing, Loosening Gen Ed Requirements

The Committee on Undergraduate Education is seriously considering replacing Gen Ed requirements with non-mandatory guidelines.

Richard S. Tilden '71, member of the CUE, said after yesterday's meeting that there was a "nearly unanimous consensus among both student and Faculty members of the Committee that guidelines should replace requirements."

Dean May, a member of the CUE, said last night that "most of the people on the Committee feel that the arguments for the guidelines are the strongest." Nevertheless, he said that he could make "no final judgements until the CUE has met with the Gen Ed committee."

As a result of yesterday's meeting, the CUE will meet next month with the Gen Ed committee to discuss the whole question of alternatives to the present distribution requirements.

The first alternative calls for the replacement of all Gen Ed requirements with a series of guidelines to be formulated by the Faculty.

The Faculty would suggest guidelines for distribution of undergraduate work.

Discussion also began yesterday on the academic advisory system, since the success of the guidelines program is contingent upon a vastly improved advising system.

The second alternative proposed would replace the current requirements with a general distribution requirement. Under this arrangement the student would take at least two half courses in each of the three fields currently established: humanities, natural sciences and social sciences.

Departmental courses as well as regular Gen Ed courses would fulfill this requirement. There would no longer be any distinction between upper and lower level Gen Ed courses.

The CUE views the two different alternatives not as precise formulations but rather as expressions of two differing philosophies of general education. Tilden and Steven R. Bowman '72 said the Committee wants both Faculty and students to become aware of the issues involved in making this change.

On Wednesday these same two alternatives were discussed in a joint meeting of the Faculty Council and the CUE. In that meeting, the second alternative was discussed at length. At the conclusion of the combined meeting, there was equal support for both alternatives.

Bowman also said that the Committee would consider the separate issues of Expository Writing and the language requirement at a later date.