What’s most amusing about reading this Targum article about the proposes changes is the arguments for a resedential college model as something new. All Douglass is today is a resedential college, albeit one with the ability to set its own degree requirements. Changing the degree requirements only solves one aspect of the issue. What makes the whole thing even more absurd is, if you read the admissions discussion, students are admitted based on a checkbox. So, as a student (a female one at that), if you pick all three, you get placed based on where the admissions gods slot you.
As for the RU Screw, the issue isn’t that you have centralized departments, but that you have some aspects (Registrar, Housing, Financial Aid) centralized and others (student adivising, activities and clubs, degree requirements) not standard. Why would you design a system where the entity offering the courses and managing registration is separate from the entity that defines the degree requirements? Why is residence life specific to each campus, each with its own training, codes, and rules college-specific, yet the housing department is centralized?
The whole system is ridiculous and needs to be fixed.