Peer+Institutions

The attached table shows the course requirements (as last spring's committee could glean from their websites) from many of our peer institutions.

The "Req" column shows the total number of quarter-long courses required (counting semester courses as 1.5 quarters). The "Core" column shows how many of those are fixed rather than elective courses. The remaining columns show how many quarters are devoted to the subjects shown; only the most common such topics are listed in columns, but any other course requirements are listed as text to the right of the table. Electives are //not// listed.

Here's what I learned from this exercise:

1. There is a wide range in the number of core courses; anything from 0-12 could be considered mainstream!

2. Surprisingly few of our peers have a quantum mechanics course (this was part of last year's motivation to teach it every two years).

3. It is very unusual to have fewer than three quarters devoted to galactic dynamics, extragalactic astronomy, and cosmology. When that does happen, it is most often dynamics that suffers. Aside from schools with no requirements or requirements that focus on the physics, there is only one school on this list that devotes less than one quarter to cosmology.

4. Schools are pretty evenly split on whether an observational methods course should be required or optional.