PrincetonUniversityNew General Education Requirements
for the Class of 2000 and Beyond
IntroductionThis booklet is written to introduce you, the members of the Class of 2003, to the new general education requirements that all candidates for bachelor of arts and bachelor of science in engineering degrees must complete as part of their undergraduate program of study at Princeton University. You will be the fourth class of students to follow a new path of general education requirements at Princeton, the first major revision of the University's general education requirements in 50 years.
In the spring of 1995, after three years of lively and at times heated debate, the faculty adopted a new set of general education requirements and made them effective with the entering Class of 2000. You may wonder why it took so long and why there were so many debates. The answer is both simple and complex. The simple answer is that curricular changes come slowly and deliberately in institutions dedicated both to the preservation and the creation of knowledge; if successful, they are brought about by consensus rather than by edict. The complex answer is that general educationwhich, from the outside, may seem to be the less important element of undergraduate education, to be followed by serious work in a disciplineis both of central importance and the hardest to think about and implement. It is widely recognized that most good colleges and universities do a fine job training their undergraduates in a particular field of study. There is much less satisfaction with general education. Colleges and universities have tried various models, ranging from the very structured "core" curriculum to a hardly perceptible general education requirement. Yet it is the substance and structure of these requirements that express, in a fundamental way, the philosophy of education held by a college or university. In discussions about such requirements, members of the faculty think not only as specialists in their own fields, but also as members of an educational institution responsible for preparing students for their professional and private lives and for their roles as citizens in their communities and in the world.
Before you go on to read about the specific requirements, reflect for a moment on their purpose. They are not the spinach you have to eat because it is good for you; neither are they something you have to get through in order to do what you really want to do. They are not obstacles or hurdles, or even stepping stones that will lead you to your desired goal. They are, rather, pathways that will introduce you to modes of thinking about science, politics, history, ethics, social institutions, visual images, and literary texts, and about the very nature of thinking itself. They will alert you to the rigors of analysis and the possibilities of interpretation. If you approach them with seriousness and a sense of curiosity, they will broaden your perspectives and enlarge your horizons. It is quite likely that some of the best and most memorable courses you take at Princeton will fulfill one or another general education requirement. Do not rush through them. Do not choose a course that satisfies a requirement simply because it is given at what you consider to be the right time (that is, not in the early morning or the late afternoon) or simply to get it out of the way. You have four years to fulfill the requirements, and a lifetime to remember them.