University eyes shrinking most popular majors

At yesterday's meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel announced that the University was investigating methods of scaling back enrollment in the five biggest majors — most of them social sciences — while revitalizing the University's other 30 departments.

The inquiry stems from a report presented to the CPUC last semester that found 46 percent of all undergraduates concentrate in one of what Malkiel characterized as the big five departments: politics, English, history, economics and the Wilson School.

One reason for the concentration is that many students — 70 percent of all undergraduates, according to a recent study — end up choosing a different major than the one they indicated on their University application, Malkiel said.

"It's a good thing that students are changing their minds...the problem is too [many] minds are changing in one direction," Malkiel said.

While 900 students in the classes of 2000 through 2003 anticipated majoring in the natural sciences, only 493 actually did. The majority of the outflow went to history and politics, with economics absorbing the rest, Malkiel said.

When asked by the audience why this trend was necessarily bad, Malkiel responded that "students are telling us their heartfelt passions differ from selected concentrations."

Students in the large departments are at a disadvantage because they are often unable to choose a familiar professor to advise their junior independent work and their senior theses, she said.

Malkiel also discussed the need for the University to foster students' passions rather than practical expectations for the job market. "There is too much assuming that you need to follow the crowd, and major in a meat and potatoes department to get a good job or get into law school," she said.

To "trim a little bit off large departments and add to smaller ones," Dean Malkiel proposed helping small departments track and target students using AP scores and performance in Freshman Seminars.

Another primary goal is to make the introductory courses in low-enrollment departments better and more interesting, "so that they can put their best foot forward," Malkiel said.

Malkiel said she is collecting data on recent alumni for inclusion in a publication profiling Princeton graduates and their accomplishments after concentrating in some of the lesser known departments.

Malkiel said students who flock to the big five departments, contrary to popular belief, are not motivated by less work or inflated grades.

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"History, politics and economics have some of the more responsible grading standards out there," she said. Moreover, doing original work is as difficult in the social sciences as in the natural sciences, she said.

More uniform grading standards would foster a more even distribution and more leveling of the student body among concentrations, Malkiel said. But she said she does not anticipate drastic change in the near future.

"This is not a problem that will be solved...it's a challenge that we will have to make progress into."