To this day, Columbia College maintains one of the most robust liberal arts curricula among the tertiary education landscape, an institutional decision that has been both lauded and denounced by students, professors, and cultural critics alike. As this dissertation examines, high tensions from all angles largely stem from the Core Curriculum's…

Higher education is seeing renewed calls for strengthening ethics education, yet there remains a dearth of research on the state of ethics education across undergraduate curricula. Research about ethics in higher education tends to be localized and often isolated to fields of graduate study. In contribution to a contemporary, landscape…

The emergence of the neo-liberal university, rapid changes to the world of work and the unravelling of the Western social contract in an era of fake news and pandemic have created a set of circumstances that define emerging university graduates as members of a global precariat. Several projections of the future world of work suggest a need to…

Data from the National Science Foundation (2014) indicate that at least one PhD in economics was awarded to a Swarthmore College graduate in every year since 1966. The authors' purpose in this article is to consider factors that may have contributed to the high number of PhDs in economics awarded to Swarthmore College graduates. While there is…

Several recent studies point to strong performance in economics PhD programs of graduates from liberal arts colleges. While every undergraduate program is unique and the likelihood of selection bias combines with small sample sizes to caution against drawing strong conclusions, the authors reflect on their experience at Carleton College to…

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…

Sun Yat-sen University's East-meets-West curriculum is distinctive, but its embrace of liberal education--education across disciplines, meant to provoke broad thinking--is far from unusual. At a time when China and its East Asian neighbors are trouncing U.S. students on international exams, educators in these countries are nonetheless adopting,…

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…

This article explores the philosophy and position of the discipline of computer science within the liberal arts, based upon a discussion of the nature of computer science and a review of the characteristics of the liberal arts. A liberal arts environment provides important opportunities for undergraduate programs, but also presents important…

With the support of a grant from the Sloan Foundation, nine computer scientists from liberal arts colleges came together in October, 1984 to form the Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS) and to create a model curriculum appropriate for liberal arts colleges. Over the years the membership has grown and changed, but the focus has remained…

Many undergraduate liberal arts institutions offer computer science majors. This article illustrates how quality computer science programs can be realized in a wide variety of liberal arts settings by describing and contrasting the actual programs at five liberal arts colleges: Williams College, Kalamazoo College, the State University of New York…

Describes strategic changes at Richland College including the consolidation and expansion of special programs through the Office of Academic Enrichment, and institutional improvements involving student learning undertaken during the process of re-accreditation. (EV)

Describes the process undertaken at King's College to create an invigorated teaching and learning environment, including a new Core Curriculum designed to ensure that students engage in cumulative and transferable learning in three general areas. (EV)

In recent reports on improvement of the college curriculum, advocates of the liberal arts as the heart of a college education promise more than a liberal education can deliver, which is a solid foundation on which to build. (MSE)