A few weeks ago the Yale College Council (YCC) proposed a policy that would reduce the number of credits required for undergraduates to graduate from 36 to 32. Written by YCC Senators Emily Hettinger, PC ’26 and Owen Setiawan, BR ’27, the bill passed with an overwhelming majority: 23 of the YCC’s 28 senators voted in favor of the proposal. Three senators did not cast a ballot, and only two voted in opposition.
Yale students take more classes compared to Ivy League counterparts. Yale undergraduates must take around 4.5 credits a semester, while according to the proposal, at all other Ivy League universities that use the semester system, students must take an average of 4 credits a semester to graduate. This isn’t to say that other Ivy League institutions are unrigorous. As Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis pointed out to the Yale Daily News, other Ivy League universities, such as Princeton University, have a senior essay requirement for the majority of their majors.
In addition to citing the difference in credit requirements among Ivy League schools, Hettinger and Setiawan also claim that this bill will even the playing field for FGLI students. According to their bill, the new policy would support students who might work multiple jobs to “afford student life at Yale.” However, financial concerns will not be solved by expecting less of students academically. More appropriate solutions exist—for example, all Yale students, including FGLI students, would benefit much more from flexibility regarding credit fulfillment policies. Students should be able to Credit/D/Fail distributional requirements, which would maintain Yale’s liberal arts principles, requiring that students take courses in all subject areas, with less stress about the outcomes. It would also encourage students to take more interesting classes in disciplines in which they feel less comfortable, instead of—no offense, Biology, the World, and Us.
The Yale student experience would change significantly with any proposed changes to our credit breakdown. Currently, because of the amount of distributional requirements required to graduate, most students use around a third of their credits to fulfill distributional requirements, around a third to fulfill major requirements, and the final third to either add a second major or explore other subjects not covered by their chosen major. Decreasing the amount of credits required would reshape this balance, creating an environment with less flexibility for course exploration.
Students, of course, would still be able to take 36 credits. But let’s be honest. Most would not. Students would simply take fewer courses that fall outside their major or distributional requirements. These “extra” classes are one of the ways that Yale students can explore, what’s more, are encouraged to wait to choose a major at the end of sophomore year. If the credit proposal were to pass, and there were fewer mandated credits for exploration, students would settle on a major more quickly.
The current Yale credit system is good enough. It works. It allows for an experience that, in the words of the YCC bill states, creates space for “breadth, depth, and exploration,” and has a level of rigor that should be appropriate for college students.
