Starting in the 2026-27 academic year, Stanford will require freshmen to enroll in Civic, Liberal and Global Education (COLLEGE) all three quarters. Previously, the program required students to choose two quarters to enroll. This decision comes after nearly five years of the program’s pilot. 

The Faculty Senate voted to pass a resolution continuing the COLLEGE program at last Wednesday’s meeting.

A part of Stanford’s general education requirement for first-year students, COLLEGE offers required courses each autumn and winter and a course of students’ choosing in the spring to address different “ideas, scientific evidence, and art [that] can contribute to [a student’s] personal development.”

In the Autumn and Winter quarter, students take seminar classes, respectively studying “Why College? Your Education and the Good Life” and “Citizenship in the 21st Century.” In the Spring, students elect to take a class from a slew of offerings on different “Global Perspectives.”  

At last week’s Faculty Senate meeting, history professor Jim Campbell delivered a presentation on behalf of the Committee on Undergraduate Standards and Policies (CUSP) about the COLLEGE program, declaring it an “exceptional program.” 

Campbell said that CUSP formally recommends the Faculty Senate to expand the COLLEGE program from two quarters to three. 

In support of the committee’s recommendation, Campbell cited studies originating in the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education that synthesized student testimony, rates of satisfaction with the program and instructor feedback.

Ultimately, the Faculty Senate passed the committee’s resolution to expand COLLEGE to three quarters on a divided vote. Several faculty members, including professor Sara Singer, professor William Barnett and School of Humanities and Sciences Dean Debra Satz, spoke in favor of the COLLEGE program. Notably, Satz said that the COLLEGE program is “doing a really good job of advancing open inquiry.” Professor Keith Weinstein, who teaches in the program, said “the COLLEGE program helped [him] to connect to students later on in their careers.”

Some of the discussion debated whether or not the COLLEGE program serves a broad enough set of viewpoints. Accounting professor Ivan Marinovic said he believed that the course served better as “fine electives” instead of general requirements. 

Speaking in favor of the COLLEGE program, political science professor Kathryn Stoner, who “went in skeptical,” cautioned Marinovic “not to judge this program by their titles of the courses.” 

Finance professor Jonathan Berk spoke in opposition to the program. “This is not a course, this is a political agenda,” he said about COLLEGE 101, referring to the inclusion of a text authored by W. E. B. Du Bois on the course’s syllabus.

Jay Hamilton, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, explained in an interview with the Daily that potential changes to the COLLEGE curriculum are considered carefully, heavily based on student feedback.

“I read all of those [course evaluations]”, Hamilton said. “It’s probably one of the most read documents in terms of student evaluations – each of those classes also has a steering committee that reads the evaluations and then also has feedback from the lectures.” 

Hamilton drew similarities to the Promoting Academic Communities and Engagement (PACE) Initiative – launched this year in an effort to increase “intellectual engagement” in classrooms – as part of what students may encounter in the upcoming fall quarter and beyond.

In addition to completing a handwritten blue book final, COLLEGE students will read a third book alongside Educated and Nervous Conditions. 

“We’re getting some feedback from the students that they prefer to deep dive into a longer reading rather than shorter readings,” Hamilton said. 

Hamilton reiterated that student input was critical even for decisions such as measures to reduce cheating.

“We just finished a really interesting new assignment where the students were asked to write essentially a one page memo about how to improve learning and reduce cheating and increase accuracy of assessment in the era of AI,” Hamilton said. “The winning essay called for ‘understanding checks’, which are low-stakes…assignments or check-ins in the class.” Students were the ones who voted on the winning essay. 

The overarching goal of COLLEGE, as Hamilton explained, is to be a “unifying intellectual course” that students can bring up outside the classroom with peers. 

“I was in line last fall, [at Coupa Café] and I heard two students who clearly didn’t know each other,” he said. “They started talking about Educated.”  

COLLEGE professors are getting more experience in preparing to lead classroom discussions, often concerning controversial topics — especially in COLLEGE 102: Citizenship in the 21st Century. Before they instruct a class, COLLEGE professors take a small version of the class themselves. 

Hamilton explained that there is a weekly “pod,” where professors meet and talk about how the week went and what is coming up next week. To Hamilton, this reflects “continual sharing and iterating about what’s likely to happen in class and ideas.”

“As a teacher, that really makes me happy, because what you want is for people to have an experience that means something to them, and so they go on to build on it,” Hamilton said.