All Students Should Write A Thesis

THIS IS THE FIFTH IN Aseries of debates between our editorial self at the Alumni Magazine.

WHAT A PLEASANT place college is these days! At Dartmouth, the hard part is getting in; after that, it's easy street. Students literally work halftime at the College, studying about a score of hours per week and spending the rest of the time busying themselves with extracurricular activities. They pick up a genteel smattering of knowledge and graduate with a brightly dilletantish view of the world they are about to enter.

How appropriate, in this Age of the Soundbite, that students should be spared the trouble of learning something in depth. Heaven forbid that students should be required to complete a thesis or other major project before graduation a project that ties together the diverse strands of knowledge a young person accumulates in several years of study. Most theses are in written form, a medium that could stand a good deal more practice by undergraduates. So how many students volunteer to write a thesis? One out of six.

Currently Princeton is the only Ivy school that requires theses. Dartmouth joins die other six institutions in offering weak excuses for letting students off (see our alter ego's earnest argument below). Is our Arts & Sciences faculty too busy to read a thousand theses a year (fewer than three theses per professor)? Then maybe some other priority should be reduced like committee work, or research. What could be more important than the one-to-one tutoring of undergraduates? Would a thesis requirement cause a lot of bad writing? Well, then, if requirements hurt the quality of work, let's eliminate all of them! Why not make exams optional? Grade-point averages would certainly go up.

As Dartmouth veers toward the 21st century, it has a choice: it can play the role of airline steward, making the journey through academe pleasant and comfortable for both passengers and crew; or it can provide a rigorous experience that truly educates, educates in depth, the young minds who are this college's reason for being.