Hardly a day goes by on this campus without someone lauding the value of a "broad liberal arts education." From opening exercises to commencement, the speeches our administrators deliver encourage us to expand our horizons by taking courses and actively seeking out knowledge beyond our comfort zone.
To encourage this sort of exploration, Princeton has instituted two separate and strikingly different policies. The first is a set of distribution requirements in broad academic disciplines. As their name implies, the distribution requirements are nonnegotiable and force students to incorporate a variety of courses into their curriculum. The second is the P/D/F grading option available to undergraduates. The idea is to encourage intellectual exploration and risk-taking in course selection by removing the prospect of a potentially detrimental hit to an otherwise healthy GPA.
By themselves, both of these policies are logical and reasonable. However, the combination of these two approaches has led to some unfortunate results. All too often, students exercise their P/D/F option in the very courses that were to have broadened their horizons. Just when the administration was hoping the scientist would apply himself to literature, he can choose to zone out and still get his LA credit. Just when the writer decides to enroll in an engineering class, he can decide that the topic doesn't deserve his full time or attention and still satisfy his ST requirement. Instead of encouraging people to actively explore (the intent of P/D/F), or forcing them to explore (the intent of distribution requirements), when students P/D/F their requirements, they are often doing so to avoid just the sort of engagement both of these policies were hoping to nurture.
Thus, we propose a revision to the current system of distribution requirements. We propose that, starting with the next incoming class, each undergraduate candidate should be required to take at least one course in every distribution area for a letter grade. That is, in those areas where only one course is required, that course should be taken for a grade. In the areas that require two courses, only one of the courses could be taken with the P/D/F option. There would be no restriction on the timing of these classes, so that a student could P/D/F their first course in an area, as long as they eventually found a course in that distribution area that they would take for a grade.
It is our belief that making these changes would make a meaningful difference in the way Princeton students plan their courses of study and, in particular, their decisions to stretch themselves academically. Our current system, though noble in design, has led to a culture in which P/D/F's are frequently used as a defensive tool that fosters disengagement rather than an offensive tool that encourage exploration. Only by making significant changes to the current policies can we hope to align the curricula chosen by our students with the ideals espoused by our administration.
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