The Rice Thresher

Location: http://the.ricethresher.org/opinion/2005/11/18/vote_down_minors_proposal

November 18, 2005 > Opinion > Faculty Senate: Vote down minors proposal

Faculty Senate: Vote down minors proposal

We continue to oppose minors on the basis that they would create false demand for classes and would worsen, not alleviate, the problem of students seeking too many certifications. (See story, page 1.) However, we welcome evidence to the contrary.

When the Faculty Senate debates the issues of minors, we hope it will consider the Student Association’s poll of undergraduates — the poll includes questions about how the number of majors selected by students would change with the addition of minors. However, given the logistical constraints associated with the paper SA poll, we fear the sample size may be too small and that its subjects will not be representative of the student population as a whole. If this turns out to be true, the Faculty Senate should conduct its own poll — preferably a scientific one — rather than ignoring aggregate student opinion entirely.

Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman and Undergraduate Curriculum Committee Chair Bill Wilson claim the main justification for minors is to encourage faculty to be more creative with the courses and programs they create. But we are not convinced the creativity of Rice’s course offerings is a problem. Right now, it seems most Rice undergraduates have the opposite problem (albeit a good one to have): Each semester, there are many more interesting classes offered than they could ever hope to take. For a university of our size, the volume and breadth of our course offerings are enormous.

Even if more creative courses are needed in parts of the curriculum, interdisciplinary minors would not be the best means to attain them. Degree programs of any kind force faculty to teach certain required classes. No matter how fascinating those classes might seem when created for or selected to comprise a minor, the fact remains that years later, a professor who wanted to teach other creative classes would be constrained by a class he had to teach — a class students would be taking as a requirement for a program. Faculty creativity would be hindered, not helped, by this system.

And “interdisciplinary” is not a dish Rice serves well. In the past, degree programs involving collaborations between departments have generally not been run as effectively as single-department programs. It is a classic principal-agent problem — those teaching the classes frequently are not responsible to the faculty who administer and coordinate the program since they are in different departments.

In any case, some of the minors currently suggested — such as business and leadership — do not appear to include any new courses; they just include combinations of existing courses. The leadership program even exists already as a certificate. It is hard to get excited about a proposal that at the moment would largely just copy and paste courses from one General Announcements page to another.

If Forman and Wilson convince the Faculty Senate that Rice has too few interesting courses — and that has not been our experience — the senate should work with deans and departments to change Rice’s offerings. Interdisciplinary minors are a falsely enticing solution we hope the Faculty Senate sees through quickly.

End of article

Back to top