Higher Education systems need to undergo significant transformation to produce graduates who are highly skilled and prepared for their roles in the impending workforce. Despite an improvement in university throughput rates, unemployment remains predominantly high, which could be attributed to the misalignment between mandatory workplace skills and…

With general education coursework making up a significant portion of associate and bachelor's degree curriculum, conveying the content and importance of student competencies to stakeholder audiences has never been more essential. Accreditation pressure and accountability measures are influencing a focus on improving the presentation of…

Selecting an undergraduate institution in the United States has been one of the most challenging experiences in college students and their families' lives. Students must weigh in both academic and non-academic factors during the college selection process. Once students have selected a 2-year or 4-year institutions, they are required to take a set…

The death of the "liberal arts," however defined, is a motif of lament in American higher education. It became a popular leitmotif in the late nineteenth century. Over the past century, there have been heated debates about the future of the liberal arts curriculum, mostly based in a narrative of decline from a golden age just beyond the…

Engagement with the arts is a fundamental element of a liberal education, especially in the first year of college. Liberal education seeks to form critical, creative citizens who can participate actively in "the various conversations that constitute a culture." The intellectual growth sparked by the arts serves many of the essential…

ACTA's What Will They Learn?® (WWTL) project is designed to help students choose the best college or university for them. The printed report and its online companion WhatWillTheyLearn.com represent the only assessment of U.S. colleges and universities that focuses on what schools are actually teaching. This report assigns grades to over 1,130…

This essay seeks to contribute to growing discussion concerning the need for more intentional inclusion of habits of mind in curriculum development, particularly in undergraduate general education, and to fuel an examination of the "dialectical" relationship between skills development and the development of habits of mind. The essay…

The undergraduate business education landscape is dramatically changing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Many of the changes are being driven by increasing costs, advances in technology, rapid globalization, and an increasingly diverse workforce and customer base, and are occurring simultaneously in both the business world…

To formulate a plan for affecting the future, business schools must first understand their origins as well as the multitude of current pressures and demands they face. The fundamental philosophy that drives business education, namely the maximization of shareholder wealth, must now be coupled with an emphasis on societal value creation. Liberal…

Professional development in higher education is traditionally viewed as occurring through participation in workshops, attending conferences, and completing learning modules. But sometimes professional learning occurs in informal and unintended ways. This article contributes to the collective understanding of informal professional learning in…

In this essay, I explore the idea that "academic" advisers are "academics" who play a major role in connecting the general education curriculum to the students' experience as well as connecting the faculty to the students' holistic experience of the curriculum. The National Academic Advising Association Concept of Academic…

"What Will They Learn?" has been documenting for the last 13 years the crisis of weak core curriculum requirements. In addition to helping students choose the right college for the right reasons, American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) works with college and university leaders on campuses around the country to strengthen curricula…

The current study surveyed students' knowledge of and perceptions about general education requirements at a large research-intensive university. Findings revealed that students harbored misconceptions about general education requirements and illuminated the reasons why students were choosing to take required general education courses at other…

In the 1960s, general education was at the forefront of innovative programs in American community colleges. Every community college designed a program of a common core of courses for the common person. General education was so popular it was included as one of the required components of a comprehensive community college along with university…

In this 12th edition of its flagship annual survey of college general education curricula, "What Will They Learn?," American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) shines a light on the wide disparity in academic standards at institutions of higher learning across the country. "What Will They Learn?" reviews the core curricula…