Curriculum Charts and Time in Undergraduate Education

This paper examines the organization and representation of time in certain kinds of undergraduate programs, here represented by a sociology program in a US university. Written requirements for the major are analyzed as constituting a "chart" that defines academic time in terms of units of before-after relationships. The paper shows how students "reuse" these temporal units when charting paths through the university and reckoning their academic work to specific futures. (Contains 9 notes.)