When it comes time to move onto "concentrated studies," students have the option of pursuing any of the majors or minors offered by Western Washington University, but may also choose to shape their own interdisciplinary concentration or major, combining independent study, internships, and Western Washington University courses with Fairhaven courses to define their course of study.
Fairhaven students do not receive letter grades; instead, they are given narrative evaluations, in addition to writing their own self-evaluations, for each class.
The 1968 academic year saw Fairhaven's first full-size class of 200 students arrive.
Initially, Fairhaven was to be a residential college, with its students required to live on campus for all of their four years there.
But in 1970, a restive student body successfully agitated to have the residential requirement reduced to two years, and a substantial portion of the junior and senior classes moved off campus.