Tufts’ graduation requirements are a behemoth. Without previous credit or double-counting courses, they make up about half of the classes students take at Tufts. This means Tufts has some of the most extensive requirements among peer institutions, with more courses needed than schools like Wesleyan and Northeastern — not to mention Amherst, which doesn’t have any required courses beyond the major. Between college writing, language and culture, world civilizations and distribution requirements, students spend many semesters completing required courses that may draw them away from classes they find interesting or that would benefit their lives or careers.
Take the language and culture requirement: For students entering without prior language experience, this requirement totals six courses — often adding up to more than 18 credits. That is more than a full semester’s worth of most students’ time at Tufts. It’s also unnecessarily confusing. As a peer teacher in Tufts’ experimental college with a class full of first-years, I recently had to spend 10 minutes answering questions just to help my students grasp what the requirement even meant. I gazed out at a sea of confused faces trying to piece together this puzzle. It’s a problem I am struggling with myself as a senior putting together my graduation documentation. Finding out how to graduate shouldn’t feel as difficult as taking an exam.
This is not to say such requirements should be scrapped altogether; Tufts’ goal of having students graduate with more than a hazy understanding of a second language is an honorable one — as is the goal of familiarizing students with another culture. But balancing these goals with reasonable expectations for students’ workloads, and allowing them more space to explore their own interests, would make for a far more beneficial learning experience.
Tufts students are already overachievers. As of 2023, nearly 40% of Tufts graduates double-majored — a feat that requires at least 20 courses in itself. Beyond that, Tufts has a strong extracurricular culture, with students filling their time with leadership positions, work-study jobs, research and other commitments. This desire to graduate with packed resumes and wordy diplomas is something the admissions office actively seeks out when selecting Tufts students. Indeed, second majors and extracurriculars can be some of the most rewarding parts of students’ time here. However, trying to balance these activities with foundation requirements and tacking on extra majors and minors, often leads to overfilled schedules that ultimately take a toll on students’ mental health.
Not only are these requirements confusing and burnout inducing — they also affect the quality of courses Tufts offers. While it can be valuable to take classes outside one’s major, forcing students to regularly enroll in courses they have no desire to take hurts both the students and their professors. There’s an air of defeat in many professors’ voices during syllabus week when they ask how many students are taking the course simply to fulfill a requirement — and see a sea of raised hands in response. I’ve been one of those hands, once taking a 100-level philosophy class solely because it double-counted for my world civilizations and culture requirements. Such students weigh down these courses, causing professors to move at a slower pace so that those students without a stronger background in the field aren’t left behind.
Furthermore, classes are often offered that cater to students seeking to get requirements ‘out of the way,’ without forcing students to fully engage with the ideas behind them. What is the purpose of forcing students to branch out if we turn around and offer work-around classes that they don’t have to fully submerge themselves in these other disciplines? It’s hard to understand how classes such as “Self and Identity” fulfill requirements for African, Hispanic or East Asian culture, despite the fact that the class doesn’t meaningfully engage with any of those regions. Similarly, I doubt students sleeping through “Dinosaurs!” lectures are getting the kind of scientific literacy the natural sciences requirement was meant to promote. To be clear, this is not a criticism of the professors or departments offering these courses — nor an argument against interdisciplinary learning. Rather, I think the creation of these classes can be seen as a symptom of the broader issues with how Tufts structures its requirements.
In order to fix these issues, I think Tufts could look to schools such as Boston University or Northeastern, which build their requirements out of tailored skill sets rather than broad subject areas. The current writing, culture, distribution and world civilizations requirements could be folded into one central curriculum of general education requirements, focused on cultural literary, quantitative and scientific reasoning and the arts and humanities. This would allow students more flexibility in their schedules and more freedom to explore their interests. After all, isn’t that why we’re here in the first place?
