Abstract

At the beginning of the 1970 decade, the Université de Montréal moved to make its curricular approach more open to interdisciplinarity. This departure from traditional distribution requirements was regarded as the solution sought to meet new socio-economic realities such as financial constraints, expansion of knowledge, and student demands for more relevance. A fter a few years of policy implementation on that matter, many individ-uals and committees within the Institution had become inquisitive about the degree of effectiveness of those policies. The purpose of this study is threefold: to determine the magnitude of the range set up by departments in their degree program structures to give students an opportunity to take courses outside their basic disciplines; to assess the degree of students' responsiveness to utilize course offerings outside their basic disciplines; and to measure the ability of departments to attract non-major students from related and foreign disciplines. The results indicate that although departments modified their degree program structures to conform to the interdisciplinary objective, over-specialization still prevails. Student majors have a tendency not to take advantage of the more flexible degree program structures to go out of their basic disciplines; when they do consume credit hours outside their departments, they do so mostly in related disciplines. It appears that, in order to imple-ment interdisciplinary practices, minimum standards for breadth and maximum standards for depth need to be set up.