Program too much

The expansion of Program II has been discussed as a possible avenue to achieve the interdisciplinary goals that Dean of Arts and Sciences Laurie Patton has outlined for Trinity College. Program II fills an important but small niche at the University. But it should not be expanded for the sheer purpose of furthering interdisciplinarity, which can be fostered in more rigorous ways.

Enrolling in Program II replaces the undergraduate requirement of a pre-determined major, or Program I, with a self-constructed major of courses distributed across departments. Although students can build their own educational experience, it has significant drawbacks. For example, students in traditional majors benefit from strong academic communities. Regardless of choosing to major in chemistry or religion, you join a department of interested students and elite professors that will collectively advance your learning. Students themselves cannot recreate this infrastructure—and the intellectual camaraderie that accompanies it—by taking courses ad-hoc across departments.

We also question the ability of an undergraduate—especially a mere freshman or sophomore—to design his or her own Program II curriculum. First of all, curricula in traditional departments are designed by experts in the field. They are time-tested. Students have a more limited grasp of the intellectual landscape they enter, usually too little to responsibly chart a route through the landscape. Given the lack of syllabus archives and online course synopses, students looking to cobble together a cohesive suite of courses hardly have enough information to understand a course’s content prior to taking it.

Furthermore, many Program II graduates tend to focus their degrees on solving problems instead of gaining pure knowledge. These two goals are intimately related, but we resist the former overtaking the latter. Taken to an extreme, Program II can transform majors into problem solving modules: “Environmental Policy for Developing Nations” and “Quantitative Foundations for Health Policy Decision-Making” are examples. Duke’s “knowledge in the service of society” ethos is important, but Duke’s greatest service to society is still producing the smartest and best-educated graduates in the highest sense, people who have knowledge above and beyond solving specific problems.

The ideal Program II curricula would focus on one of two things: First, learning two or more distinct disciplines and studying their intersection (“Music and Computers” or “Neurophilosophy” are past examples) or, second, a discipline in which Duke does not have an established program. For the former objective, interdepartmental majors are an underpublicized and underutilized option that could meet this need. Rather than double majoring, students can combine the cores and elective requirements of two majors and benefit from each department’s advising infrastructures. For the latter objective, if Duke does not offer a certain program, the student should recognize that Duke may not have the appropriate academic resources to accomplish the student’s academic goals.

Expanding Program II is a serious matter. It risks lowering the standard of rigorousness for a Duke degree by providing less academic infrastructure and camaraderie. It also suggests a radical reconceptualization of the purpose of the Duke degree, which is becoming increasingly customizable. Interdisciplinarity can still be achieved, and often with better results, in a traditional Program I.