The PDF will include all information unique to this page. Download 2018-19 YCPS PDF. All pages in YCPS Catalog.
After almost three years of research, the Committee on Majors has come out against academic minors.In a report published Jan. 21 on the committee’s Web site, the committee recommended against adopting academic minors for the time being. The report does not rule out alternatives to minors, including certification in select disciplines such as foreign languages. But it recommends waiting to institute any changes until after a major curricular review is completed in fall 2010.
![Minors Minors](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125377274/715470802.gif)
In addition, the committee expressed concern in its report that minors might discourage students from academic experimentation and place a burden on overextended departments’ financial and administrative resources.ydn-legacy-photo-inline id=”8379″ The report and its findings will be a key topic of discussion at Thursday’s meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Yale College Dean Mary Miller said. “In language and culture, we understand why certification would work,” Gordon said. “It’s a circumscribed set of programs in which most of the courses are arranged vertically, showing advancement. In the Harvard model, where minors are miscellaneous and any five courses in ‘x’ or ‘y’ becomes a certificate — I don’t know how meaningful that is.”In an interview with the News last November, K. David Jackson, DUS of the Portuguese Department, said he supported minors because they could encourage more students to pursue advanced study in foreign languages and boost enrollment in Portuguese courses.But in an e-mail Tuesday, Jackson said he now finds the idea of minors “problematic.”“A ‘minor’ interest might not be the same as the kind of courses we offer in literature,” Jackson said in the e-mail. “Also, I have never met anyone who became deeply interested in Brazil, for example, who would have been satisfied with a minor.”AWAITING THE VOTEResearch into similar practices at peer institutions was crucial to the committee’s report, Lewis said, but the decision to pursue minors ultimately rests with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.