BU Administration wants General Education to last for four years. We don’t.
What will Engineering, English, Business, and Art Majors have in common if BU’s proposed overhaul of General Education is a reality? The same set of requirements across the entire University.
The BU Task Force on General Education has quietly proposed new universal guidelines for Gen Eds that would last four years. The “requirements” the Task Force is proposing consist of 12 skills they want all undergrads to have, such as Critical Thinking, Research Skills, and Scientific, Ethical and Quantitative Reasoning. If these puffy, buzz-word skills sound like what you learn from your major anyway, that is because they are just that. (Isn’t the point of a major that it be specific to you?) Since the Task Force is not in charge of implementation, we’re all in the dark about how this fits into your major and what will overlap. CGS and the CAS Core Curriculum are nowhere to be found in their guidelines, and say goodbye to graduating in three years, not to mention problems with study abroad, double-majoring, minoring, 5-year programs, etc. They also proposed the “Cross-College Challenge”, a vaguely defined project in which students from all colleges will work in groups together to create something during their junior year. If you know about Questrom Core or CGS Capstone, this looks like another version of that.
The committee is interested in creating “One BU”, yet simultaneously believes students should seek generic virtues such as “intrepid and humble”, and “resilience, self-sufficiency, and nimbleness”, while encouraging “desirable habits of mind”. This language is infantilizing. We chose BU because of its diverse identity, not because of conformity.
You probably don’t know about any of this. The committee has been exceptionally poor at effectively reaching out to the student body: at a recent meeting, 9 students were in attendance. We believe that more than 9 out of 15,000 care about this issue. We want you to know what’s happening at your school. We’re the Student Curriculum Committee, and we want students, faculty, and staff to know how BU is being run, which is why you need to talk about this to your friends, professors, and family.
If you don’t like the sound of four year Gen Eds, head to this Google Doc of the working paper at goo.gl/D7fr3z and leave a comment. For maximum anonymity, logout of your gmail before commenting. We want your voice to be heard. For more on this and the issues that matter, subscribe to the SCC Newsletter at goo.gl/lQjeQJ, follow us on Twitter at @theBUscc, and read what we’ve written at medium.com/@scc.bostonu
Sincerely,
The BU Student Curriculum Committee
About us:
We are a newly formed undergraduate group that seeks to address the concerns of underrepresented interests within Boston University.