LANCE MCNEIL
Contributor
For almost four years, I’ve pondered Pepperdine’s selection of majors and arrived at one conclusion: some are more difficult than others.
We need to acknowledge and account for the varying difficulty of different majors. I propose that Seaver College adopt a ‘strength of schedule’ provision when calculating academic awards, such as Dean’s List and graduation honors. Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude and Summa Cum Laude are, of course, academic honors bestowed to graduating seniors with cumulative GPAs of at least 3.5, 3.7, and 3.9, respectively.
Similar to the one used by the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in determining College Football rankings, a strength of schedule provision would seek to even out the academic playing field, so to speak, by assigning difficulty indexes for majors. Such a provision would also account for other variables — such as total units taken per semester — that impact the relative ease and difficulty of achieving a certain GPA.
In high school, we were handsomely rewarded if we decided to take Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) classes — coursework that was undoubtedly more difficult than the regular courses that most students took. An “A” in AP English, for example, counted as a “5” when calculating one’s GPA whereas an “A” in a standard high school English course was just a “4.”
Why the added weight on an AP or IB course? For most, the answer is simple: because AP and IB classes were more demanding. The coursework in AP classes was far more complex, more difficult to grasp, more time-consuming, and almost always covered more material than an average high school class.
In theory, it was harder to achieve an “A” in an AP class than it was in a regular one. So it is no wonder that high schools nationwide acknowledge and adjust for this fact by weighting these classes a full grade point higher than traditional classes.
Obviously, high school is in every Pepperdine student’s rear view mirror, so the above analogy may seem irrelevant when considering the relative ease of a college student’s major. And to some degree that is true. We are not, after all, in high school anymore. But the principle remains the same: the workload and course material of some majors make them more difficult than others. If it is clearly more difficult to achieve a 3.5 GPA as a particular major than it is as another, shouldn’t academia account for this discrepancy when handing out academic hardware? It has not been done yet, and it should.
What, then, you might ask, constitutes a “difficult” major, and what should be labeled “easy”? Most will agree wholeheartedly that majors such as mathematics, physics, biochemistry, sports medicine, accounting and business administration can be intense intellectual challenges. The coursework of majors such as communication, international management and sociology, on the other hand, seems easier by comparison. That point can be argued, but probably just as important as the intellectual complexity of a major is the amount of required coursework that one must complete in it.
Graduating from any four year college or university with a degree in any subject is an immense accomplishment and deserves nothing but praise and respect. But with all due respect to majors such as organizational communication, international management and sociology, the simple fact of the matter is that they are academic lightweights. According to an economics major, not only is the subject matter of these majors “laughable,” these two majors require only 33, 32 and 29 units of coursework, respectively — a paltry number.
Accounting, international business and physics, by contrast, require 66, 60, and 59 units of coursework, respectively. To major in mathematics, you need to complete at least 53 units. And to earn a B.S. in biology, it will take between 69 and 72 units of major coursework, depending on your choice of a few upper division classes. How about a B.S. in Sports Medicine? 57 units.
The majors seemingly easiest in terms of course material, generally speaking, require only a fraction of the units of major coursework that more difficult majors do. When you consider Pepperdine’s GE course requirements total approximately 68 units, the number of required units by a major becomes all the more important.
Consider the following example. Assume that two students are entering their freshman year at Pepperdine. For the sake of uniformity, neither will be transferring any AP, IB or other course credits. Each will have to complete every GE class requirement, and each will obviously need to complete 128 total units of college coursework to graduate. One student decides to major in Sociology while the other chooses International Business. The student majoring in Sociology will be done with both his/her GE and major requirements at 97 units, leaving them with 31 units to do as they please. The International Business major, on the other hand, will have essentially no time in their schedule for weak electives or a minor, as their GE and major requirements total exactly 128 units.
A major’s difficulty index should seek to account for two variables: total number of units required as well as the complexity of required course material. To be fair, an academic ‘strength of schedule’ provision shouldn’t focus solely on a major’s difficulty. It should also account for other variables, such as the ratio of units taken at Pepperdine versus units transferred in from Community Colleges, as well as adjust for minors and double majors.
Obviously, there are intriguing rebuttals to nearly every argument. Many probably feel that majoring in what “you’re best at” or “what comes easiest to you” makes an academic strength of schedule unnecessary, as everyone will likely be performing at their maximum potential. But this type of thinking has two flaws. First, it discourages people from challenging themselves and studying what they love, even if it isn’t naturally their academic forte. Secondly, it doesn’t take into account that some major classes (e.g., Organic Chemistry, Policy, Automata Theory) are just plain tough. Almost everyone, no matter their intellectual giftedness or aptitude in these respective fields, will probably have a harder time in these courses than in classes like Small Group Communication.
The idea of an academic ‘strength of schedule’ might seem exotic, and to some degree, deservedly so. Its purpose is not to laud certain majors and degrade others — it’s to acknowledge that academic awards such as Dean’s List and graduation honors are harder to come by for certain majors.
01-31-2008
