Starting next fall, students may be able to opt out of introductory courses that are prerequisites for more challenging, higher level courses. The Course Replacement Program, if approved by Binghamton University’s administration, would allow students to test out of certain introductory level courses in favor of engaging with a more challenging curriculum. The ability to test out of such courses would benefit students seeking to challenge themselves through their undergraduate tenure at Binghamton. Any students willing to push themselves should be encouraged to do so, rather than be compelled to sit through an underwhelming course for 15 weeks. We hope that University administrators move forward on this proposal.
Course replacement puts students from different educational backgrounds on the same level. Not every Binghamton student graduated from a high school with Advanced Placement courses. These students are no less capable than their peers who graduated from schools with International Baccalaureate or Advanced Placement programs — they simply have not been presented with the same opportunities. If individual students can demonstrate that they have sufficient knowledge of a subject to fulfill a course’s requirement, they should be able to skip this course and enroll in one that requires this course as a prerequisite. Students are paying thousands of dollars a semester to attend this university and no one should feel their time is wasted. By moving to more advanced courses earlier in their academic careers, students will be able to make the most of their time at BU.
The program would allow professors and department heads to determine which courses students can forego. Faculty may determine that competency cannot be demonstrated through passage of a single final exam, which is the measurement currently suggested in the proposal. Of course, faculty understand their courses better than anyone else. The program’s proposed flexibility is necessary. If faculty determine that no course replacement is appropriate for any class at Binghamton, we must defer to their judgment.
Some classes appear more suited to course replacement than others. In humanities classes without sequences or prerequisites, it seems inappropriate to give students the option to place out. If these students would like to enroll in an upper-level course, there is no prerequisite barring them from doing so. Additionally, humanities professors often tailor subject matter to specifically selected course materials. Humanities students learn more from discussion sections and research papers than timed final examinations. Classrooms offer invaluable experiences here, like learning how to work with primary sources or criticism. Students in these courses need not feel jealous of their fast-tracked counterparts — knowing how to find the limit of a parabola is not the same as having closely read and discussed “Antigone” with students of different intellectual and cultural backgrounds than ourselves.
Although course replacement should be an option for certain classes, students should be wary to take advantage of this possible option unless confident in their ability to adjust to the increased pace of upper-level courses. A student might be able to pass an introductory biology final, but flounder when placed in a course with students accustomed to a larger workload. We don’t want to hamper the ambition of BU’s brightest minds, but we also recognize the value of learning to walk before learning to run.