In the United States, colleges and universities have traditionally undertaken the important task of preparing citizens to participate fully and effectively in the civic, political, and economic spheres of the republican system. They have done so by joining a general education curriculum--common to all students--to an area of specialized knowledge,…

As community colleges increasingly embrace their vocational role at the expense of their general education mission, the author of this chapter argues that a curriculum centered on a "Great Books" canon as developed by Mortimer Adler in the 1920s would revitalize liberal education at community colleges and serve both the general education…

The purpose of a general education program is to produce generally well-educated adults who can function as informed citizens and engage in the popular intellectual debates of their time. The skills and frames of reference that are necessary for thoughtful, independent opinions are themselves the objects of debate, but there are points of…

Ten years ago, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gathered data on 100 colleges from the U.S. News & World Report's annual list of "Best Colleges and Universities." ACTA questioned whether these elite institutions were requiring their students to take rigorous, college-level courses in the core areas crucial for…

The word "liberal" derives from the Latin "liber," meaning "free," and describes a mind unencumbered by either prejudice or indoctrination. The adjective "liberal," however, has become, at least in some circles, synonymous with anti-capitalism, anti-business, and therefore anti-American. This author has…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs ) are much less in the news today--but that does not mean that they are no longer important. Rather, their importance now derives from what they demonstrated about the fractured nature of college curricula. Almost all MOOCs were one-offs--a single instructor/performer and a well-bounded subject. MOOCs almost…

This essay examines the current general education curriculum (gec) structure at a large institution where the gec program has been remodeled often to meet student needs. Assessment of this structure has been limited. Faculty and adviser perceptions of the gec's role in the larger curriculum, strengths, areas for improvement, and impact on student…

This article examines the relationship between academic specialization and student exposure to a range of academic domains of knowledge. It uses a concentration measure--the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index--to investigate whether students who choose single majors or double major are more or less concentrated in nine domains of knowledge most…

This article reports on a 2012 survey conducted by members of the Louisiana Academic Library and Information Network Consortium (LALINC) to determine the status of the curricular integration of information literacy instruction following numerous budget cuts to Louisiana higher education since 2008. The article also discusses the 2012 deletion of…

The article provides a comprehensive examination of the use of ePortfolios to assess and improve the General Education Program in a public university in the southeastern United States. The implementation process, six years of assessment data, findings from the recent reaffirmation of accreditation conducted by the Southern Association of Colleges…

This article is an exchange of ideas between Peter Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), and Tom Klingerstein, Chairman of the Claremont Institute and NAS Board Director, on the study "What Does Bowdoin Teach? How a Contemporary Liberal Arts College Shapes Students" (by Peter Wood and Michael Toscano). This…

ACTA's report "The Cost of Chaos in the Curriculum" reveals that the vast array of course choices given to college students is a cause of exploding costs and poor academic outcomes. And a bloated undergraduate curriculum is particularly detrimental to the success of students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The report documents how…

America's great public universities were founded with the highest expectations of academic excellence and service to their states. Overall, these institutions, often called the "flagship universities," do a poor job of ensuring that undergraduate students engage in an intellectually vibrant campus culture and leave with a solid…

The general education program at UNC-Chapel Hill has abandoned the concept of a core curriculum. Instead, students choose their "required" classes from lists of thousands of courses that may be as narrow and idiosyncratic as Love, Sex and Marriage in Soviet Culture (RUSS 277) or The Gardens, Shrines and Temples of Japan (ASIA 586).…

This program profile examines efforts by WPAs at York College, a senior college in the CUNY system, to adapt to externally imposed changes and develop a locally meaningful writing program. 1999 marked the end of remediation at four-year (senior) colleges in The City University of New York. The elimination of developmental writing at CUNY's senior…