The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAU&C) has just issued a survey report on Trends and Emerging Practices in General Education. The survey instrument covers responses of the chief academic officers of 433 colleges and universities, and its results show a surprising consensus on the increasing importance of general education in current curricular planning.

The most interesting number, for me, was 15 percent — the number of institutions for whom “cafeteria style” distribution requirements are the sole institutional commitment to general education. More than two-thirds of all of the institutions surveyed combine some sort of distribution requirement with other attempts to “integrate” knowledge: freshman seminars, common intellectual experiences, thematic required courses, upper-level general-education courses, learning communities, capstone courses or requirements, and more. The report concludes that while most institutions are still committed to the concept of “breadth,” requiring students to take courses in fields outside their specific interests, “only a tiny fraction now rely on this model alone to ensure that students get the outcomes they need from a college education.”

Perhaps even more surprisingly, the AAC&U finds that 89 percent of the institutions surveyed “are in some stage of either assessing or modifying their general education program. Assessment of cumulative-learning outcomes in general education is, in fact, now becoming the norm. Fifty-two percent of institutions are currently assessing cumulative learning outcomes in general education beyond the level of individual course grades.”

For me, this is a very encouraging finding, since it indicates a widespread commitment to taking general education seriously. I am also encouraged that there is so much commitment to assessing learning outcomes beyond individual course grades — although it is not clear from the report how specific the notion of “learning outcomes” is. My impression is that the outcomes being assessed are very general, and there is little evidence that they are tightly coordinated with the assessment of disciplinary (or field of concentration) learning outcomes. Still, it seems that we are moving in the right direction — although since the survey is of AAC&U member institutions, this is, in effect, a survey of the members of the church choir.

I teach in a distinguished institution that is perilously close to being one of the “tiny fraction,” the 15-percent minority of schools that have little more than old-fashioned distribution requirements. Princeton seems to pride itself on retaining old curricular values, though of course we now have freshman seminars and we have long required every student to write a senior thesis. Still, I am always disappointed by the lack of substantive breadth in our underclass education, for I believe that it limits what upper classmen can accomplish intellectually. But I have to say that I think the real challenge that still remains for all institutions is to be much more specific and targeted in specifying four-year learning outcomes. Pieties about critical thinking are not sufficient. We owe it to ourselves, to our students, and to the parents, to be clear about our teaching and learning goals. We are making progress toward this end, but we still have a long way to go.