The announcement of a new major coming to Keene State College certainly sounds interesting on its own. However, the editors of The Equinox feel it is a little misleading to say the major is brand new when it is just reworkings of old majors.
According to the Economics Department Chair William McColloch, the idea for the Finance program comes from the career paths of Keene State College alumni from the Economics program. The Finance program is essentially a reworking of the current Economics program, which we inherently think is not a bad idea.
A rebranding of the Economics program sounds great to appeal to a different type of incoming students. Changing up a pre-existing program to work out the kinks is absolutely the way to go. Improvement should always be paramount when it comes to the departments.
We do however see a problem in calling it a new program instead of a reworked program. It is misleading to students who may believe the program is entirely brand new instead of something that is just rebranded. It just seems to us like the school trying to brag about getting a new program, despite it hardly being new.
While we think these patchworks of old programs are fine, it is problematic when that is the only thing being done. Bringing in a new major with new staff would be great. This is where the proposed Accounting major would come into play.
While the Accounting program has not been approved by the Keene State College Senate Curriculum Committee yet, it is proposed. This would also bring in one additional faculty member to be able to handle the new program. We believe having only one additional member would probably create a lot of burn out for them and more faculty should be accounted for.
We see creating something new as preferable, but we also do like the rebranding of old programs as well. One advantage we see in the rebranding is patching together majors and similar minors. Tacking on extra classes, for someone partaking in a minor related to their major, could be a heavy burden to bear. Patching together similar classes may lighten some of the burden by providing great help in the students’ college career.
On the downside, this might be useless for people who would not feel it necessary to have had the extra classes anyway. For them, the patchwork would be more of a burden than if there were none at all. We do not think there is a single definitive answer for this conundrum and each student would have to proceed with what they think is best suitable for them.
While we believe the reworking of the Economics program to the Finance program is a great move on the part of the college, it should be more clear that is what it is. We would also welcome the new Accounting program if it would be accepted, although we hope more effort will be put in place with it.
