Search

Until the mid-nineteenth century, higher education was a repetitious business in which all students followed a prescribed curriculum in order to earn a bachelor's degree. Over the course of the roughly two centuries that separated the founding of Harvard College in 1636 from the beginning of the modern era in American higher education, "both the curriculum and teaching method were standard. Students had little or no choice of courses, and recitation by students was the only teaching method faculty used" (Frost, 2000, p. 5).1 Under this system, students generally received guidance from a tutor who "worked with one or more classes in all subjects" (Frost, 2000, p. 5). Given the inflexibility of the curriculum, the profession known today as academic advising was not needed. Surprising though it may be to academics used to students arriving in their offices with very particular ideas about which courses they would and would not like to take, the notion that students should have any agency in designing their courses of study is little more than a century old.