Most students these days don’t enjoy the common curriculum. Lucky for us, there’s a committee almost two-dozen strong who are working to restructure Loyola’s approach to the liberal arts education.

But what exactly is wrong with it to begin with, from the students’ perspective?

Right now, most majors have somewhere between 40 and 50 required hours of common curriculum courses. This is a manageable load for many, though it poses a problem to those majors with a little more work to do, like music and sciences, which are loaded with rehearsals and labs that take up far more weekly time than their attendees are given credit for.

What’s more, the common curriculum course selection is heavily unbalanced between departments. How are we to become well-rounded when departments like psychology in the social sciences rarely offer more than one common curriculum class a year?

The present system, in which A-level major courses often fail to fulfill university requirements in common curriculum, is both inefficient and restrictive upon students. We’ve had 12 years of mathematics before college, so why must we take basic math courses again simply because their course number starts with a Z? If lower A-levels counted for non-majors, students’ own personal interests might be piqued and their attention held. This is not the case in such classes as “Faith, Science and Religion,” an excruciating class by most accounts I’ve heard.

So, what’s being done about the common curriculum? Well, everything is very tentative at the moment, but a few things are being tossed between the faculty and Student Government Association.

First of all, future freshman should expect to see more seminar courses. So should future sophomores and juniors, as these seminars may be required for up to three years.

Unfortunately, with the rising class sizes, I don’t know how they could possibly enroll all lowerclassmen in classes of 20 students or less (the projected class size for these seminars) and keep teaching the rest of our curriculum.

There’s also a push for a greater language requirement. Most majors now have requirement through the 101 level of a language. Soon it may be double.

I think this is a fantastic idea. Everyone knows no one learns a language in two semesters. Hell, no one speaks fluently after four semesters, either, but at least the students will learn more than just asking for the bathroom or the time.

Overall, the new proposed curriculum could add up to over 70 hours for certain majors. This is a daunting leap for some, who may not want to spend half their college career becoming “well-rounded.”

It also bodes poorly for those who might wish to change majors after a year or two, as they might not have the elective space to finish without going super-senior.

We’ve spent 12 years getting our well-rounded education; college is a time to start specializing. Too many hours of courses we might not want to take just means too many disinterested students. If the requirement is for a given subject, make sure most classes in that department count.

Finally, if they want to restructure the curricula, great, but keep the course load reasonable.

James McManus is a world religions major. He can be reached at [email protected].