Monday, August 4, 2014

20140804.0557

I do not think that I have made it a secret that I do a fair bit of freelance writing. It is usually through a clearinghouse of sorts, and the orders that come in through it are often for write-ups of schools and programs. In most cases, some brief summary information about the college or university and the specific unit offering the program is followed by a short note about the degree and a list of the major courses for it, and the client is happy. (Truly; most of my client ratings are across-the-board "excellent.") It is not terribly difficult work (although finding program information sometimes takes a bit of doing; some schools are not exactly forthcoming about their curricula), although it is somewhat tedious at times, and it is time-consuming.

One thing that I have learned from doing the work is that many degree programs are markedly similar in their offerings. Course titles may vary somewhat, as may course sequences, but the content of many degrees with the same name is more or less the same. What strikes me as being of interest, however, is how the various schools gather and divide the materials of those courses. Examples from my own field illustrate the point. (I am hesitant to name schools and programs here. I am not sure why, but using hypotheticals seems the thing to do.) One program in English might require majors to take six sophomore-level British literature courses: medieval, early modern, eighteenth century, Romantic, Victorian, and twentieth- and twenty-first century. Another might require two or three, instead. Yet another might divide the medieval at 1066, or roughly into Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. Each can be justified easily. Each will offer different things; narrower periodic action allows for deeper investigation, while broader allows for a more diachronic view that highlights continuity and change across the periods. (It also highlights the problems of periodization, which is a discussion for another time entirely.) Other programs function similarly; it matters in an MBA program, for instance, whether micro- and macroeconomics are taught in tandem or as separate courses. It matters in an MPH program whether biostatistics and epidemiology are yoked together or studied individually. It matters in an MFT program whether religious counseling is emphasized as a discrete subject or incorporated into others.

I suppose the point being made is that there are reasons that course sequences are set up as they are. Even if the materials among them are more or less the same across programs, the specific divisions alter the way in which that information is provided and, since curricula are about far more than the simple delivery of information, the ways in that information is received and treated by those in the programs. The reasons may not always be the best in terms of pedagogy (I am put in mind of some of the public speaking classes I have taught), but they are there, and they perhaps ought to be considered as programs of study are selected.

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