Fri 13 Jan 2006
The CEP, after investigating the curriculum for possible improvements in the area of diversity, has identified 3 main areas for improvement: (1) student interests that can be fulfilled by faculty teaching at Williams ["student interests"]; (2) hiring priorities that would help Williams enhance it’s curricular diversity ["hiring priorities"]; and (3) Re-examining the People & Cultures requirement ["the PC requirement"]. The committee will be discussing the latter two in April and May.
Please note that all commentary in square brackets is mine.
Student Interests
Regarding student interests, CEP solicited student input, but warned them that more drastic change would take longer, urging students to focus on opportunities achievable by faculty already teaching at Williams. Over 100 students responded, and a few main themes emerged. The majority of responses focused on renewed/enhanced offerings in Asian/Pacific American Studies, Jewish Studies, and Arabic language. Minco was more general, and wanted more AfAm studies and South Asian studies. Because of these, CEP prompted the late submission of a courses in “the literature of British Colonialism” [which seems more like a caricature of a literature course than an actual course] and Jewish studies.
CEP noted that several departments, anticipating student desires, have made hires in that direction. Classics has hired a prof who can teach Jewish Studies, American Studies a specialist in Asian literature, and Comparative literature a person who can teach Arabic [but will hopefully be less controversal than Edward Said]. International studies has added a concentration in South Asia, and AfAm has added a capstone and introductory course while continuing its to-date unsuccessful efforts to hire a “Senior African-Americanist” [they SERIOUSLY need to come up with a shorter term]
My Commentary
I don’t have too much to say about this. I think it’s good that the departments are responding to student concerns, but they should not let student desires overwhelm the hopefully rigorous requirements of a major. Additionally, I think it’s a bad thing if students come to college and end up majoring in “themselves”, as it were… it seems the complete opposite of the Williams tradition of “uncomfortable learning”. Obviously, that’s what some people wanted to do all along, and that’s fine. But the college and the curriculum should encourage students of ALL backgrounds and political orientations to branch out to fields beyond their own backgrounds.
Hiring Priorities
The report contains very little on hiring priorities — the matter was apparently tabled until the Spring. It noted the desire to allow the new programs to take root, but not to starve the old ones.
My desire is that the college needs to find a professor who will teach the Warfare material that Professor Wood currently teaches. Professor Wood’s classes are both EXTREMELY popular and on an area completely neglected by every other department on campus (i.e., without ready substitutes). To me, this should be the number one priority upon Professor Wood’s retirement.
The PC Requirement
The committee opines that the PC requirement is probably not expanding curricular diversity, noting it
has virtually no effect on those students most concerned with diversifying the curriculum (who do not need a requirement to prompt them to take courses of this kind); nor has it markedly affected the curricular choices of most other students, inasmuch as approximately 90 percent of the student body, in the year before the requirement was put in place, would already have satisfied it of their own choice.
Instead, the committee plans to revisit alternatives that might expand curricular diversity, including a proposal that was thankfully, albeit narrowly, defeated in 2001 — a Social[ist in]Justice” requirement, which may replace or supplement the PC requirement.
My Commentary
As one might expect, I think that the idea of a Social[ist in]Justice requirement is not only misguided, but even less likely to affect the curriculum (and therefore even less necessary) than the PC requirement is. I will limit myself to the alleged need for such a program, because I think what I would say about the drive for such a push is both completely obvious and would only incite a flame war.
According to page 28 of the self-study data, less than 14% of the students in the sample self-identify as far-right or conservative. (I think that I, at the time, described myself as such, but only because the survey was based on an overly simplistic right-left spectrum, rather than something more accurate like a Nolan chart.) No group of students has more than 14% of students who identify as “far right or conservative” ["Right"]– Caucasians and Asians at 14%, Latinos at 13%; African Americans at 6%. In contrast, across all groups 55-60% of students identify as far-left or [modern] liberals ["Left"]. For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll assume that the rest is comprised of left-leaning, right-leaning, and centrist moderates ["Middle"].
Assuming that none of the Right would not take such courses and that only half of the Middle would, it seems like a significant majority of students would already be inclined to take such a course or courses on their own — i.e., all of the Left and half of the Middle, a proportion totalling about 75% of the campus. Given the substantial proportion of campus who would already take such courses (given the above assumptions), it seems like the proposed requirement’s effect on the curriculum would be quite small. Instead, I think that this reflects a desire of a portion of the faculty, which was a minority in 2001, that students need to be educated about issues of concern to the Left from a Left perspective. Since I am not privy to the details of this, I cannot say for sure, but I seriously doubt that an Austrian Economics class focusing on, e.g., the impact of rent control and minimum wage and how they harm the poorest elements of society, would pass muster even if there were anybody on campus to teach such a class.
Many departments already include required classes from that perspective, none of which are in DIII, thankfully. It would have been awful to sit through preaching on how science comes with “social obligations” while I boredly made stick-figure doodles of Lysenko. Political Economy, Sociology, ANSO, WGST are all majors that include courses that I would group under that rubric. In addition, AFAM, Latino Studies, and Environmental studies also require such courses.
Given the pre-existing departmental requirements on top of the prevailing likelyhood of the majority students to take such courses anyway, it is unlikely that such a requirement would be more than marginally more effective than the PC requirement in shaping the curriculum.
Instead, I would offer my own suggestion. Obviously, this has to be a requirement that would shape the curriculum and be easy for students to fulfill. It should meet a gap in the curriculum (unlike PC or Social[ist in]Justice). I would propose a “Critical Reasoning requirement”, that could be fullfilled in a variety of ways. E.g., con could offer a course in Austrian Economics, Math an intro-level course in formal logic, Poli-Sci an intro-level course from a public choice perspepctive,… but many other courses could fulfill this as they are currently constituted or with only minor tweaking, such as an intro-stat course with examples about how you can make statistics say virtually everything you want, any compsci course that requires more than a trivial amount of programming, or a sociology class on improper samples. This would not only shape the curriculum, but give students a perspective that they are not either naturally inclined to or likely to encounter in their other courses.
Ideally, I would like to see Williams follow Swarthmore’s lead in integrating a full-fledged Engineering major with a vibrant liberal arts curriculum, but I daresay that I’d be holding my breath until I were purple in the face.
9 Responses to “The Curriculum”
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I wouldn’t recommend holding your breath for an engineering department. To the best of my knowledge, Smith is the only liberal arts college that has added engineering in recent years. Swarthmore’s engineering department has been around for more than a century.
With 25% of next year’s Williams seniors declared as Economics majors, I suspect that a more pressing curriculum issue is how to scale back other departments to meet reduced demand and allow shifting of faculty resources to a much larger Econ department.
hwc’s point about the “problems” in the ECON department (see the December 7th Record — no link since the site seems down at the moment) highlights the problem with Hu-DeHart’s view on how best to increase faculty diversity.
For those who haven’t read that far in the report, Hu-DeHart argues that the best way to increase diversity is not for the ECON department to look extra hard for a diversity-increasing candidate when it is hiring its next labor economist. There are just not enough non-white candidates in such pools. Instead, the College should determine that it wants to hire, say, an expert in the history of Asian immigration to the US. Almost every candidate in that pool will be diversity increasing.
The problem comes when lots of students want to study economics and not so many want to study other offerings.
(If I were in a snarky mood, I would list a bunch of course names with low enrollment that Hu-DeHart would probably like to see more of at Williams.)
There is a trade-off between offering courses and majors that students want to study (but which are too rarely taught by URMs) and offering courses and majors that will very often be taught by URMs but which students do not find that interesting.
I think that Williams needs more of the former and less of the latter.
or, though i disliked the outsiders reports, one could wonder why Williams is 25% econ while competing schools have nowhere near that dominance toward econ. Is our department just that well-renown? Or is there something underlying it?
I really don’t know how to respond to Lowell’s original post in a manner that would be constructive. Unsurprisingly, let’s just say that I disagree.
Styles change. Econ was not the top major 30 years ago: it was fifth, following History, English, Psychology, and Biology. For a breakdown of majors for the Class of ‘75, see http://www.williams75.org/majors.htm.
My musings for the change. The late 60s/early 70s was the time of the “counterculture.” Being an Economics major put you in the same league as the money-grubbing, screwed up Establishment. (That attitude quickly flipped in the late 70s during the recession, when everyone decided they wanted to go to business school and make big bucks, or at least not be unemployed).
Economics always had a larger number of professors compared to other departments with similar course loads because of the Center for Developmental Economics and a declared practice of getting a large number of grants. So more Econ professors was less of a budget burden because some were either (1) teaching at CDE or (2) supporting themselves through grants. Perhaps the larger set of professors and possible courses now makes the major more interesting.
Econometrics and heavy stats is now much less esoteric than it was 30 years ago due to the proliferation of computers. Thirty years ago economics was largely philosophy with numbers; now it’s applied stats and psychology. Maybe the discipline is just more appealing than it was before.
Econ is good preparation for business school or law school. Need I say more?
Guy:
The issue is not that Economics is a popular major. It is one of the top 5 most popular majors at virtually every “elite” liberal arts college and liberal arts university I’ve looked at (usually along with Bio, Poli Sci, Psych, and English).
The issue is that 25% is an extremely large percentage — double what you typically see. The only school I’ve seen with a higher number is Claremont-McKenna (40%) and, of course, that is a specialty school concentrating almost exclusively on econ, poli sci, government, and business related study (the school doesn’t even have its own science departments).
The extremely high percentage of Econ majors at Williams is relevant to the discussion of diversity and community fragmentation because it raises the questions I’ve raised on several occasions. Is Williams targeting one specific student profile too heavily in the admissions process? Is there a sense of exclusion from the “dominant campus culture” because the dominant campus culture is so…uh…dominant?
From the diversity report data, we know that the varisty athletes tend heavily towards econ majors. Experience suggests that prep school students tend heavily towards Econ majors. We know from the link provided above that the second largest course at Williams was “Biology of Exercise and Nutrition”. Is the stereotype of Williams as preppy jock school valid? Does Williams have “diversity” issues sufficient for Morty to appoint a task force because there is a lack of diversity in the admissions process (and I don’t mean skin color)? Is this the elephant in the living room that is never mentioned in the campus reports on anchor housing, alcohol culture, and diversity?
From a curriculum standpoint, the huge number of Econ majors must have one of three inevitable ramifications. The admissions department must be tasked with enrolling fewer future Econ majors, the Econ department must find a way to make the major unattractive, or resources must be shifted from other departments to the Econ department. Faculty allocation is largely a zero-sum game at a school that already has an 8:1 student/faculty ratio.
HWC,
I didn’t think that I was just saying that Economics was a popular major — I was trying to point out that it went from popular (#5) to really popular (#1), although you are correct to point out that the level of “number oneness” is the most interesting point.
In the early 70s, 20% of an admitted class would declare itself as pre-med, with a ballooning of initial Bio and Chem majors. However, Orgo usually weeded out those without the right stuff, and the graduating pre-med numbers were around 10%. I bring this up because in those days there was seen to be a direct link between two majors (Bio and Chem) and post-graduate work.
Since I can’t believe that every Econ major wants to teach Economics in college, maybe there is a confluence now between multiple post-graduate goals (B-school, law school) and being an Economics major. Such a theory would support why Econ continues to be a popular major, but not why Williams is so different from its peers.
I think another, perhaps salient, point that hasn’t been mentioned is that Williams’ strength in Economics is now at least 50 years old. In the early 60s, being on the Williams Economics faculty was a direct link into Kennedy’s New Frontier, due to an informal connection with the Brookings Institution. In fact, the CDE is a lingering manifestation of this activist economist orientation at Williams. To take a more recent example, Cappy Hill worked at both The World Bank and the Congressional Budget Office.
The department’s outsized reputation and impact, especially within peer liberal arts colleges (if we’re talking college presidents, Cappy Hill (future Vassar), Steve Lewis (Carleton), Michael McPherson (Macalester), and Morty Schapiro (Williams) were all initially Econ professors at Williams), may make it hard to shrink the empire. For example, if someone wanted to shrink the Romance Languages department, that could be done without much soul searching. However, shrinking the Williams Econ department would strike to the core of Williams’ current identity.
Alas, the Record article does not provide as much background as one might like as to the reason of the surge in economics majors. It does report that:
Although 134 is clearly an outlier, 81 is still, I think, significantly higher than the 1980s, when I seem to recall about 50 majors per year. Is a long term time series available? I also seem to recall that political science and psychology were no more than 50 per year then. Perhaps their recent decline is back toward a long term average.
Back in the day, a lot of weaker students were political science and psychology — not my brother and my father, of course! — so perhaps their recent drop is consistent with a decrease in low band admissions.
Lowell writes:
Dream on! Although I have had my differences with Wood in the past, I recognize that the College needs more professors like him.
The likelihood that the Williams history department will hire a historian of warfare to replace Wood is close to zero. Would anyone predict differently?
But, if the Hu-DeHart and others have their way, you can be sure that whoever replaces Wood will be a different color.
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