Guidelines for Further Studies Courses:

1. The primary basis for designating a course as a "Further Study Course" is that it serves the goals and objectives of the General Education Program.
2. Prerequisites for Further Study courses should not include courses outside the General Education Program.
3. For each Further Study course, departments must specify the Introductory course or courses that it follows.
4. All Further Study courses must earn at least 3 hours of credit.
5. Designated Further Study courses must be offered at least once every three years.
6. Departments should make every effort to make the scheduling of Further Study courses predictable. The Schedule of Courses will indicate the next semester in which Further Study courses will be offered to assist students and advisors in planning a course of studies.
    

Clarifications:

Guideline 1: While every upper division course offers greater depth in a field than introductory courses, not every one of them is suitable for general studies. Departments need to identify the courses that will best meet the goals of General Education in their application.

Guideline 2: Some designated Further Study courses have hidden prerequisites students enrolling learn only when class begins that if they lack certain courses they should drop. In the first place, this poses a truth in advertising problem, and for General Education purposes, it is not appropriate that a student need course work outside the general education curriculum to complete work in that curriculum.

Guideline 3: The program design is based on the relationship between Introductory and Further Study courses. The relationship should be clear. The committee will begin publishing information that the departments have provided regarding these connections in order to aid students and advisors in building coherent plans of study.

Guidelines 5 & 6: Since the program requires students to take certain sequences of courses (Introductory/Further Study) it must offer the courses it requires. Students should know when they take an Introductory course that they can complete the sequence they have begun within a reasonable time. Students and advisors need good information if they are to plan a coherent course of study. The availability of General Education courses should be regular and predictable. When departments cannot make this level of commitment to offering a course, they are really saying that it is primarily an elective course, not a required one. That decision is the department's business, but the availability of courses required by the General Education program is not only the department's business. Quite simply, courses that cannot be offered regularly should not be designated as Further Study courses, whatever their theoretical merits for fulfilling that role. Departments have the right to change their Further Study offerings over time.