PrincetonUniversity
 

Report of the Four-Year College Program Planning Committee
August 20, 2002

II. Framework
   A. Guiding Principles

Before turning to specific recommendations, we should be explicit about the framework within which the Committee has imagined the future of the residential colleges. The Committee’s thinking has been guided by a number of principles. First, and most important, the Committee sees the residential colleges as central to the University’s educational mission, and thus our proposals are designed to enable the University more effectively to realize its educational objectives in the residential setting. The Committee has recognized from the outset that it needed to do its work within a pre-existing physical and social framework, and we have adapted our recommendations accordingly.

Second, the Committee has been mindful of the insistence of the Wythes Committee that the expansion of the undergraduate student body should serve as an opportunity to improve the overall quality of undergraduate education. The Committee has looked explicitly for ways to make the Princeton experience better for all of our students -- a mandate directly related to, but intentionally broader than, developing the program for the four-year colleges. Thus, many of the Committee’s recommendations are designed in part to assist the University in addressing institutional needs associated with the increase in the size of the student body. These include the provision of physical facilities to accommodate instructional and extracurricular activities for all undergraduates. More generally, the proposals will contribute to the sustenance of personalized instruction, guidance, and care of undergraduates, the hallmark of a smaller-scale Princeton.

The Committee expects the new college plan, with three four-year colleges, each paired with a two-year college, to permit:

• better integration of freshmen and sophomores with juniors, seniors, and graduate students;
• early exposure of underclass students to the distinctive features of upperclass intellectual life;
• increased opportunities for student leadership in the residential setting;
• development of an on-campus social life incorporating undergraduates from all four classes as well as graduate students;
• fuller integration of the academic enterprise and the residential setting;
• more effective interchange between students and faculty members;
• enhanced advising and support for all undergraduates;
• greater exploitation of the broad educational potential inherent in the residential setting.

As well, the new college plan will make plain, both to matriculated and to prospective students, that there are real and robust options for residential life that can satisfy the needs and interests of the widest variety of Princeton undergraduates.