Fear for the future of democracy in the 1930s and 1940s led university educators to redefine the purpose of general education as preparation for democratic citizenship. This mobilized social scientists to engage in curricular reform and experiment with progressive pedagogical practices in new general education courses. These courses have been…

The paper examines the STEM approach as one of the revolutionary tools for transforming education. This paper discloses the content of the concept of "STEAM-education", substantiates its importance and prerequisites for its appearance. The author elucidates a comparative analytical review of trends and prospects for the development of…

Curricular innovation is at the center of the challenges many colleges and universities face as they seek to help students address more successfully than previous generations the complex, multi-faceted, systemic challenges of global climate change, population growth, loss of biodiversity, environmental justice, toxic wastes, and food insecurity.…

Mark Van Doren, the noted literary scholar, once remarked, "The college is meaningless without a curriculum, but it is more so when it has one that is meaningless." Many current critics of undergraduate curricula in America assent to the crucial need for programmatic renewal in our colleges and universities. They bemoan the cookie-cutter…

When the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) launched the Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) initiative in 2005, they certainly knew that it would not be easy to achieve the sort of transformation needed to ensure that higher education serves all students--and society--more effectively. The LEAP initiative builds…

This report, directed toward junior college board members, presidents, deans, department heads, and teachers, as well as legislators, attempts to stimulate thought and action to improve general education in occupational programs offered by junior colleges. Following a review of the unsatisfactory status of present curricula, a rationale and…

The landscape of higher education--the growing variety of higher education institutions, the cultural environment, the competitive ecosystem--is changing rapidly and disruptively. The higher education landscape is metaphorically crossed with fault lines, those fissures in the landscape creating potential areas of dramatic change, and is as…

In 1965, the Policy Committee of the University of Utah was asked to evaluate the general education program (the basic courses required for graduation), and to make recommendations for its improvement. Students had found the old program rigid, a hurdle, irrelevant, and taught by left-over teachers. The Committee proposed that a new position of…

Prior to 2003, virtual universities were being created at a rate that would question the usual perception that higher education rarely changed, or changed (if at all) at a glacial speed. No comprehensive study of what was actually being created had been done; nor had anyone tapped the experiences of the developers in the states to see what was…

Six selected nontraditional approaches to curriculum at the University of Minnesota, each leading to a baccalaureate degree, are described. The programs are designed to provide flexibility to students enrolled in the university or to extend a university education to people not otherwise served. Each involves individual student selection of work to…

This case study reviews the emergence and evolution of eCore (the University System of Georgia's electronically delivered undergraduate core courses) over eight years and summarizes the issues, ongoing challenges, and lessons learned from interinstitutional collaboration in offering and administering a "virtual" shared core. The bulk of…

Based on thirteen examples of humanities programs across the U.S., this book attempts to address the question of what an effective core humanities curriculum should include. It looks at issues such as course requirements, standardized versus more flexible programs of learning, and the question of how responsive such programs should be to current…

The purpose of JIST (January Independent Study Term) at Eisenhower College is to balance the breadth of a true liberal arts education with an annual January period of study in depth. Each student at the College is required to complete 4 JIST's. The projects vary from independent study supervised on a semitutorial basis to group projects involving…

The undergraduate curriculum in liberal arts colleges has become extremely standardized in the past 20 years in spite of demands for educational experimentation and reform. This document presents an examination of 6 undergraduate curriculum structures at 26 liberal arts colleges to determine the amount of reform actually taking place. The 8…

A feature article in the "Chronicle of Higher Education" reported a campus controversy over an innovative general education program that received praise and attention nationally. In this essay, two administrators, prompted by that article, both tell the story of institutional change and raise theoretical questions about what the…