The Caltech student body, faculty and administration share many assumptions about Caltech. These beliefs are common to most of us … Caltech is a good educational institution. Caltech produces a top quality scholar. The quality of the entering freshman is increasing. Though minor research modifications might be necessary, the basic research structure and orientation of Caltech will still attract future large-scale Federal support. Caltech is an intimate and personal college… The gradual erosion of the freshman’s zeal marks his intellectual maturation… The healthy emotional and personal growth of the majority of Caltech students is possible in spite of the obvious social limitations of the Caltech experience. If any changes are required we have plenty of time to effect them.

It is my sincere conviction that all of these views are complete myths, lacking any foundation in fact. Though these beliefs may not all represent the verbal positions of the Caltech community, they certainly reflect the operational tenets reflected in the workings of the Institute. At this point, I would like to deal with just one of these myths and examine its validity.

Is Caltech a good educational institution? Freshmen who come into Caltech, excited, enthusiastic and eager leave this place largely emptied. In many sad ways going to Caltech is tantamount to committing intellectual or scholarly suicide. This freshman energy is not channeled into experiences designed to enhance it. Freshman learn that science, something once loved as a sparkling orb, light and exciting, becomes the daily routine drudgery of physics lab and math assignments. Even more distressing, many freshmen try to convince themselves that the drudgery is in fact, what they came for. After all, science is tough.

The Caltech student body, world known for its academic competence, experiences education as an external process. Little real responsibility for developing scholarly self direction falls on the student. The emphasis seems to be on the substance rather than the structure of information. If the Caltech education is supposed to prepare students so that they can do without Caltech it is not evident from our undergraduate program.

It may surprise you to know that the preceding four paragraphs were written almost 35 years ago by Joe Rhodes, the recently reelected ASCIT President, and published in the California Tech on April 25, 1968. The words are eerily resonant today, and this Wednesday, we will attempt to address many of these issues in a day of meetings and presentations. As we take a hard look at the curriculum this week, I would like to point out that these are not just current problems, but may be as old as Caltech itself.

Rhodes was certainly not the first to speak out. Bernard Shore wrote in the March 10, 1949 Tech: “A lightening of the academic load would provide students with an opportunity to satisfy the intense intellectual curiosity that is so characteristic of them… the student is cut or stretched to a preconceived pattern that ignores individual differences, needs, abilities, and interests.”

These complaints have always been there, and over time, the faculty has responded to these complaints by diversifying the core curriculum, expanding humanities offerings, mandating pass-fail grading for freshmen, offering more different majors, and reducing the number of units required to graduate. Nowadays, our graduation rate is improving each year, and is dramatically better than a few decades ago. However, we are still far behind our peer universities in that respect, and the same criticisms of the Caltech academic program are still being voiced today.

The Student-Faculty Conference on Wednesday will identify and characterize some of our most pressing problems. The committees will also provide simple solutions for many of them. However, the most important work will come in the weeks and months after conference. We should not expect to solve decades-old problems in one day. Some reforms will require significant additional work and changes will likely need to be made at the highest levels.

The conference is the most ambitious event of its kind that Caltech has seen yet, and I have high hopes that Wednesday, April 16, 2003 may be the day we start making Rhodes’ “Caltech Myth” a reality.