The American Council of Trustees and Alumni released a report on Monday that says few of America’s top colleges require English majors to take a course on William Shakespeare. The council looked at 70 public and private universities, and found that English departments at only 15 of them required Shakespeare. “A degree in English without Shakespeare is like an M.D. without a course in anatomy,” says the report. “It is tantamount to fraud.”

The council’s report, “The Vanishing Shakespeare,” follows up on one that its predecessor organization — the National Alumni Forum — completed of 70 institutions in 1997. That report included 55 of the same institutions that are in the council’s new report. It found that 23 English departments required Shakespeare.

The National Association of Scholars, another group with a tradition-minded view of the curriculum, issued a report with similar findings in 2000. Both earlier reports were challenged by some academics as oversimplified and methodologically flawed. —Robin Wilson