Despite declines in the number of liberal arts bachelor's degrees awarded by four-year colleges, the growth in liberal arts at community colleges has made up the difference, countering a national narrative that the field is in crisis. As designated by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, the liberal arts cover a range of…

This short report provides a systematic accounting of the provision of humanities and liberal arts education at public colleges in the United States, including community colleges. Key findings: (1) Humanities and liberal arts education in America's colleges is not in decline. Across the nation's community colleges, the number and share of…

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…

Article reports on the General Education movement and cites the need for new organizational alternatives for general education programs of the future. (GB)

A curriculum design that focuses on the human sciences, the disciplines that concern themselves with the social and individual activities that are distinctively human, would be a better approach than the current separation of the humanities and social sciences. (MSE)

Cites the Rockefeller Commission's findings regarding humanistic studies. Outlines steps for bringing humanism back to the humanities, e.g., by clarifying the humanities' substance and identity, elucidating a cogent and persuasive rationale for their study, and underscoring the importance of a cultural/humanistic context for vocational training.…

Highly specialized education is no longer relevant to the needs of our diversified society. A return to a broad, general education curriculum is needed. (HS)

The author presents a two-fold design for liberal learning. Of foremost importance is the ethical quality of deliberate design. Secondly, the design of liberal learning should give students strength, finesse, and imaginative courage in purpose. (Author/AF)

In recent years, education has shifted its goals from acquiring a classical methodology to learning how to make a living. Students are taking fewer liberal arts courses; and at the same time, reading, thinking, and reasoning skills are declining. With the advent of Sputnik in 1957, the idea that hard science had the answers to the world's problems…

Religion and science have become polarized in modern society, a conflict characteristic of the humanities generally. Comparative religion has a place among the other humanities disciplines, since religion and science have a relationship whose roots go to the basis of our cultural tradition. (MSE)

The designation of "liberal" as the educational path toward a person's cultural completeness has given way to use of that term in contexts implying freedom for personal exploration of all kinds. The primary functions of the liberal education institution have become sidetracked by consumerism. (MLW)

The past is the substance from which the present is formed, but college curricula based on this cultural heritage need not exclude the present. Major classical writers and social thinkers must be central to it but should be accompanied by critical engagement with living texts from powerful and active minds. (MSE)

If higher education is to have a coherent curriculum and a coherent way of thinking about the world, it may need to study premodern ways of thinking for both insights and the courage to think in new ways. The tradition of the humanities, which originated in fifteenth-century Italy, can help. (MSE)

Describes the development of LAND, an organization of liberal arts faculty and administrators at Michigan's community colleges, formed to engender closer interinstitutional ties. Highlights LAND's major conferences and other activities since its formation in 1985. (DMM)

Excerpts from "Five Reports on Undergraduate Education" are presented. Advice on what college teaching should be is the focus. 70 references. (MLW)