Top colleges are increasingly pushing students to learn about foreign cultures, become religion connoisseurs and even study abroad.
These changes mark efforts to revamp requirements to incorporate more diversity in curricula of top-tier universities, academic experts say.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a proposal last Friday to alter the school's science requirements and improve study-abroad programs.
Harvard University came out with a similar academic report earlier this month, calling for the required study of religion and U.S. history, according to the university's Web site.
And, outside the Boston area, other Ivy League-caliber universities - including Penn - are following suit.
Penn revised its College curriculum requirements last semester, getting rid of distributional classes and adding required classes on foreign cultures. The changes have already gone into effect for the current freshman class.
Over the last few years, Columbia and Yale universities have likewise amended requirements. Neither school foresees more changes in the near future, despite their peers' recent moves, administrators from both schools said.
These moves show a growing belief in higher education that students should move beyond traditional academic study and venture overseas - or, at least, learn about other cultures.
"There's a growing need for the nation to have more of a global focus," said Tony Pals, spokesman for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank specializing in higher education.
And that new focus is palpable at MIT, which is now encouraging its students to leave the lab and spend time abroad, according to a member of the committee that recommended the curricular changes.
Worldwide interest in globalization is urging students in all schools to gain "more access to international experience," MIT political science professor Charles Stewart said.
"Students [today] are more multicultural," he added.
But for MIT and Harvard, the proposed changes may take up to two years to materialize, according to officials at both schools.
In the City of Brotherly Love, where the curriculum changes are up and running, "things are going OK," School of Arts and Sciences Dean Dennis DeTurck says.
No decision has been made regarding the implementation of an United States Cultural Analysis Requirement, a much-debated proposal that would require study of minorities in the U.S.
But DeTurck said he in no rush to add more demands to an already-packed list of College requirements.
"People will explode," he said, adding that most faculty and students are experiencing a "curriculum fatigue" and are ready to move on to a new topic.
This wave of change indicates a budding theme across major universities, which tend to implement new policies around the same time, according to Pals.
But other experts call the timing nothing more than a coincidence.
"The primary responsibility of the faculty is teaching in the curriculum," said William Hamm, president of the Foundation for Independent Higher Education, a Washington, D.C.-based group that provides resources to independent schools. Therefore, "you're going to want to review those things . periodically."
