CSUN REFORMS WILL SHOW 'LESS IS MORE' CLEARER REQUIREMENTS IMPROVE QUALITY, TIMELINESS OF EDUCATION.

Byline: Ronald McIntyre, Diane Schwartz, Jennifer Matos and Harold Hellenbrand Local View

EARLIER this month, California State University, Northridge, completed the most comprehensive reform in more than two decades of its requirements for general education - the breadth courses required of all students.

To our more than 31,000 current students and the tens of thousands who will enroll in the years ahead, the changes that take effect in fall 2006 should be cause for rejoicing.

CSUN's new general education policy heralds clearer requirements that will improve the quality of students' higher education, while also increasing the numbers of students who should graduate in a timely manner.

The university is overhauling what was an extraordinarily complicated set of requirements that many students - and even CSUN faculty members and student academic advisers - struggled to understand. The new policy brings CSUN's general education program into line with the rest of the 23-campus California State University and California's community college systems.

During the past two decades, for example, CSUN has required freshmen to complete 58 to 60 units of general education course work. Yet students coming to CSUN from community colleges and other universities could take just 48 units. Now, in one major reform, the same 48-unit GE requirement will apply to freshmen and transfer students at CSUN. And both will be closer to the historic norm in U.S. higher education that divides students' course work roughly into thirds: one-third for general education, one-third for the academic major and one-third for electives.

Consider that a typical bachelor's degree involves 120 or more semester units. Thus, students who have started at CSUN as freshmen since the university's old GE program was adopted have had little room for courses outside their academic major. Under the new program, students will have increased chances to add a minor, pursue special interests outside their major, and to simply take the correct courses required in their field to graduate.

CSUN's new GE program does not soften the university's graduation requirements or the academic rigor of programs. The total number of units required for graduation remains the same, and students still must take courses in a broad range of disciplines. Since faculty are clarifying goals for the entire general education program, as well as working on ways of assessing whether the program communicates those goals to students, the quality of education at CSUN will become even higher.

Both faculty and students supported these reforms. CSUN's faculty spearheaded and shaped the new general education program through a broad, 18-month consultative process. Its final reform package was ratified by the full faculty senate in an emphatic 48-8 vote last month. University President Jolene Koester accepted the changes earlier this month.

Students and their leaders also broadly endorsed the new reforms. As far back as 2001, nearly 40 percent of students in a survey cited both the university's old general education system and academic advising difficulties as creating obstacles to graduation. While some obstacles to graduation are beyond the university's control, CSUN can at least provide its students a clear set of policies to help guide their studies.

Often in education, we forget that ``less is more,'' as the poet Robert Browning once wrote. When the less - in this case, a streamlined general education program - is well designed with clear goals, students can learn more. The answer to better learning is not necessarily laying on more requirements.

There is no single answer to improving education and students' time to graduation. But at Cal State Northridge, we are fortunate to have an engaged, imaginative faculty and staff who are always exploring better ways to give our students - no matter what their different backgrounds and needs - the highest quality education.