Liberal education has been disappearing, and what remains is diminished and compromised. At Temple University, the largest department in the college of liberal arts is criminal justice. The second largest is counseling psychology, and the humanities disciplines have become left-veering sociology. While islands of traditional learning survive, the…

Transcript data were analyzed to determine changes in course taking among graduates of high schools including mostly lower achieving students in California, Florida, Missouri, and Pennsylvania, which adopted high graduation requirements in the 1980s. Average credits per student increased in all academic subjects, as did the courses' difficulty…