Strange as it may seem, the UCLA administration wants to cut class.
No, not miss a lecture, ditch a discussion or sleep through a lab like students sometimes do. Provost Scott Waugh and company want to trim superfluous courses and lower unit requirements for majors.
The College’s new catch phrase “Challenge 45″ is, well, a challenge issued to the department heads to reduce the upper-division requirements to 45 units. It is an attempt to level the playing field and give students more freedom in choosing classes while simultaneously eliminating excess, all in an effort to start cutting costs in light of the budget crisis. Such a suggestion raises serious questions about the direction of this university’s rigor and academic mission.
But at its core, this Editorial Board endorses Challenge 45 as an opportunity to take a good, hard look at curriculum. Serious self-evaluation is always a good thing, and eliminating inefficiency in the midst of budget woes is critical if we want to get out of the red.
Perhaps the wisest move by the administration is the decision to let individual departments handle their own curriculum reevaluation. It seems obvious that the people closest to the classes and to the voices of students know what is most valuable and fundamental to their mission. They are the ones most able to weed out the dead weight.
And while enforcing equality among multiple, vastly different majors may be dangerous and counterproductive, gesturing toward such a utopian vision cannot hurt. Different majors require much different course work to give students the core knowledge they need, but there currently exists an almost 40-unit gap between the majors with the lowest unit requirements (in the 30s) and those with the most requirements (in the 70s). Majors at the higher end of the spectrum demand that students work for the equivalent of nearly two diplomas.
This Board understands that certain majors require more units and more work by nature, but when working hard starts meaning taking summer school and paying more L.A. rent to finish on time, hard work becomes an economic problem that filters students by socioeconomic status. Many students simply can’t afford to choose majors that require so much summer work.
But although Challenge 45 empowers departments to make their own cuts, this presents its own set of problems. Left with very little leverage to ensure that departments do in fact reevaluate their curriculum, it seems only logical that the university would begin to withhold money for lecturers and new courses in departments that don’t attempt to meet their challenge. If administered this way, Challenge 45 could devolve into a sort of mandate attached to funding ““ one that universally forces all departments into action rather than just the departments that most need reassessment.
This Editorial Board stands by giving departments as much autonomy as possible as the university continues to attempt to navigate this ongoing crisis. The departments should be given the choice to ignore the university’s mandate, accept the funding deficit and make cuts from other critical areas.
But the university’s initiative here is essentially positive. Advocating rigorous self-evaluation at a time like this is an important step toward weathering the storm.