UNC recently announced that the Triple-I will downsize to the “I requirement.” The rejuvenated version of the requirement is supposedly one that fixes the plethora of issues students have had with it.
The class is shrinking from large 300-person lectures to a more intimate setting with two professors rather than three. Instead of being a bulky first-year requirement, students can take it during any of their four years at UNC. Most excitingly, the accompanying Data Literacy Lab will be provided in a more “satisfying manner,” separated from the I course. Let’s hope that means incoming students won’t have to experience the dread of watching hours of mind-numbing videos teaching us how to use a spreadsheet. Personally, I let them play simultaneously on three separate devices as I showered.
While I can’t deny that these changes are promising, whether it’s a triple-, double- or single-I, the issue lies not just with the structure of the class but with the principle behind it.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m a vehement proponent of interdisciplinary education. One of the most beautiful aspects of Chapel Hill’s curriculum is that students have the choice and freedom to dip their toes into whatever discipline they desire. It’s not uncommon to see unique major-minor pairs at UNC: health policy and management majors minoring in applied mathematics and computer science majors minoring in Japanese.
The Triple-I requirement, on the other hand, strips students of that educational autonomy. I have countless friends who were unable to take important pre-med classes or get into a necessary chemistry lab because they were forced to take a Triple-I course they weren’t interested in and didn’t feel they benefited from.
The premise of the Triple-I may sound invigorating, but in practice, it’s ineffective. Having multiple professors teach a course can lead to confusing class structures and even full-blown arguments between professors over the curriculum (yes, this happened to my class). Some professors rotate teaching every class — one with a very organized slideshow presentation and another who speaks extemporaneously without clearly defined topics. Others only teach for a third of the semester each. With such irregular structures, very few Triple-I courses have achieved the level of coherence needed to provide an enriching experience for students.
Amid peak midterm season, my friend’s 5-foot-2 frame was sprawled across a large whiteboard as she crammed every square inch with information about the multiverse as a part of Interdisciplinary Studies 122: Triple-I: Humans and the Cosmos. If I’m being honest, I barely went to my Triple-I and when I did, we were watching movies. I have friends required to do pages of reading on the history of pandemics for Interdisciplinary Studies 124: Triple-I: Pandemics: Ethics, Literatures, and Cultures while others lie on the gym floor doing yoga poses.
Inconsistent difficulty levels among Triple-I courses will not resolve themselves by simply removing a professor. Every interdisciplinary topic is unique in how it’s taught, and it cannot be standardized in a way that puts all the various classes on the same playing field.
If students are required to take a course at the expense of other classes they would rather take, they should walk out of it feeling like they’ve intellectually profited. That’s not always the case. When the school forces our hand with a curriculum that isn’t well-structured, students pander toward the Triple-Is they have heard are academically easier rather than take classes they have genuine interest in. This can easily be avoided by making the I requirement optional.
