The Justice

The Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering Committee proposal has caused quite the buzz on campus. Although the Brandeis community has largely been debating the implications of the interdisciplinary nature of the proposed reforms, I think that the CARS proposal to phase out the BA/MA program is most upsetting.

The authors of the CARS report are straightforward about this proposal. Under "miscellaneous recommendations," the CARS report asserts that four year BA/MA programs are "generally not appropriate, with the work done to earn the MA closer to an undergraduate honors degree than a true graduate degree." The CARS reports adds, "the existence of these options precludes the development of 5-year BA/MA programs, which might offer students an attractive option of achieving the MA degree, while also providing revenue possibilities for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences." The History, Anthropology, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biology, and Physics departments carry four-year BA/MA or BS/MS programs.

The four year BA/MA program is not "closer to an undergraduate honors degree program." I can attest to this as a younger graduate student myself. I speak regularly with the BA/MA students who are placed in the same seminars as graduate students. They may elect to do readings, but in many cases, they are right next to graduate students learning about theory, historiography, higher levels of analysis and graduate school level project design, among others. The BA/MA students also feel overwhelming pressure to meet graduate-level reading requirements and write graduate-level papers. If a poor paper is turned in, most professors do not take it easy on the student because he is an undergraduate student in the BA/MA program. The Graduate School prides itself on fairness and is just as constructively critical of BA/MA students as it is of regular graduate students.

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