A plan introduced by student government officials to incorporate academic minors into MSU's curriculum would bring it in line with other Big Ten schools.
"Everybody on the issue loves the idea of minors," said Robert Murphy, ASMSU's Academic Assembly chairperson. "The only question is, how do we implement it?"
ASMSU is MSU's undergraduate student government.
Current cognates and options could be eliminated to fit the program, Murphy said. The minors will require students to take 15-25 credits in each field.
Murphy said some concerns that remain include not shortchanging departments and making sure they still receive revenue from tuition.
Mary Finn, assistant dean for Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., said minors won't increase the probability of a student getting a job after college.
"You certainly can't go to grad school on a minor, but they satisfy students' desires to show they've done a critical mass of work in an area," she said. "They can have it recognized on their transcripts."
Minors were introduced at Northwestern in the mid-1990s, Finn said.
The biggest problems in establishing an academic minor program are consolidating the current programs MSU offers and ensuring that students in a certain major can have priority enrollment in classes of that field over non-majors, Murphy said.
"They're the ones with the degree in this," he said. "They need the classes to graduate. This will take the largest amount of time to evaluate."
Premedical and anthropology junior Marisa Lapp said minors would help her be recognized for her medical studies.
"I don't get acknowledged for premed even though I'm fulfilling the classes," she said. "They should definitely simplify (the program). It's too broad right now. You can major in anything."
The introduction of academic minors will help the university fit into the rest of the Big Ten, Murphy said.
"Everybody has minors except for us and apparently (the University of) Wisconsin," he said. "We'd like to see as many minors as possible. The ideal situation is to be able to minor in every major in the university. The closer we get to that, the better.
"Everybody in the system wants to do this — it's just a matter of overcoming bureaucratic shuffling."
ASMSU officials expect the academic minor program to be operating by the end of the year.
