At Emory University, undergraduates working through the courses that they need to take outside their major in order to graduate can find guidance in the college catalog. There, they learn that they must complete a certain number of courses in different subject areas, but “no rigid program for either degree [BA or BS] is prescribed by Emory College.” Students do, in fact, have lots of discretion in their college career. “Each student,” the catalog assures, “must design a program of study suited to individual interests and needs.”
But only a few sentences later appears a statement that runs against the individualist creed. The section “General Education Requirements” begins, “These courses provide for a common core of academic experience for Emory College students.” The term “common core” is a loaded one, with echoes in Core Knowledge Foundation, Common Core, and the Association for Core Texts and Courses, which advocate a body of knowledge and works that all educated adults should know.
A few pages later in the Emory catalog, however, that assertion is withdrawn. Under another section headed “General Education Requirements” appears a primary qualifier: “The general education component of an Emory undergraduate education is organized to present an array of intellectual approaches and perspectives as ways of learning rather than a prescribed body of content.”
“Ways of learning” is another loaded term that works squarely against “core knowledge.” It shifts away from content and toward method, interpretative angle, cognitive orientation, and the like. The hope is that as students take required courses in history, literature, art, science, and math, they will absorb the ways of thinking that go with each one. The topic matters less than the approach.
It sounds viable to professors who spend their lives examining various approaches, but let’s be honest about how it appears to 19-year-olds. They see such an “array” as merely a bunch of random, disconnected courses outside their major. The courses they finish don’t cohere into a “core” or a “common experience.” They’re just a bunch of heterogeneous hoops to pass through. When students can fulfill their humanities requirement by choosing from a list of 47 courses (shown in subsequent pages in the Emory catalog), we should drop the language of “core” altogether.
This is why the American Council of Trustees and Alumni gave Emory an overall grade of “C” in its review of general education requirements at 100 top colleges across the country. It’s entitled “What Will They Learn?” ACTA’s summation of its survey:
“Instead of a limited number of courses, broad-based in focus, institutions now typically demand that students take courses in several wide subject areas—the so-called distribution requirements. Within each subject area, it is not uncommon for students to have dozens or even hundreds of courses from which to choose. … Once distribution requirements become too loose, students inevitably graduate with an odd list of random, unconnected courses.”
Why do colleges not tighten the requirements, then? For the obvious reasons. One, students like having more choice. Two, faculty either don’t believe in, or are scared to declare, what every graduate should have read, studied, and remembered. For all too many of them, the worst trait is “prescriptive.”
22 Responses to The State of General Education
unusedusername - September 2, 2009 at 1:39 pm
College students are adults, and should be treated as such. If there is a certain set of knowledge that all educated citizens should know, that information needs to be learned before college, for the obvious reason that not everyone goes to college. In fact, most people don’t need a 4-year degree for their jobs. The main purpose of college is to learn a specific set of knowledge and skills that can be used in a career. Electives are fun, and I took full advantage of mine, but college students should be allowed to make their own choices. No distribution requirements–at all. If someone doesn’t know the three branches of government and what a virus is, they shouldn’t be going to college to begin with.
markbauerlein - September 2, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I agree that students are adults, unusedusername, and also that knowledge should indeed be learned in teen years. But the fact is, it isn’t. Check out NAEP scores for 12th graders in history, science, and civics. Look at ISI’s civic literacy survey results. Kids are entering college with abysmal knowledge levels, and colleges can’t ignore them.
fossil - September 2, 2009 at 3:31 pm
It’s hard enough to find an adult anywhere, let alone amongst the undergraduates!
22113683 - September 3, 2009 at 7:52 am
1) College students are a curious mixture of adult and child, sophisticated (even jaded) in some ways and complete naifs in other ways. One can’t treat them as children, because they’re not, and of course would find it insulting. But one can’t really treat them as mature adults, either, because they are fragile and, well, immature. They are currently in a cognitive development stage that I don’t remember reading about in Piaget. They need guidance. In point of fact, an 18-year-old often does not know what she needs intellectually.2) One can talk until blue in the face about what students _should_ know before they enter college, but we deal with what’s here, not what _ought_ to be here. In fact very few high school graduates know very much about our culture. (They all know, however, how to put a condom on a banana.) Nearly every college except the most elite now has “developmental” courses in basic math, English, etc., as well as tutoring services. Where I teach (a “somewhat selective” private college), we have students who cannot locate their home state on a map of the U.S.; students who do not know the three branches of the Federal government. I had a student who transferred from a state university in a well-known New England state (!) who had literally never heard of the Constitution of the United States; didn’t know what it was, what it was for, what it says, and even asked me, “Is this in print somewhere so I could read it?” She was not a “special needs” student, but an ordinary, average 20-year-old. Her vote counts as much as yours or mine. For the sake of the public safety, she needs to be required to take a course in political science. She’s my Poster Child for required Common Core education.
22113683 - September 3, 2009 at 8:02 am
Re: “unusedusername:” Students are legal adults, meaning they are old enough to vote, drink, smoke, cohabit, and otherwise destroy themselves and others. They are not adults intellectually, which is what we’re dealing with in the classroom. I also have to disagree with your statement that “The main purpose of college is to learn a specific set of knowledge and skills that can be used in a career.” The fact is, neither they nor you know what career they will actually end up in; a majority of people are not employed in the field in which they majored in college. With all due respect, I submit that the main purpose of college is not to show them how to make a living, but how to have a life.
anon4321 - September 3, 2009 at 8:06 am
As a grad student at Emory, I could never get a handle on the course specificity. Students didn’t take general courses in their field, but a smattering of highly specific courses that theoretically overlapped to make sure they had the basics. The General Education requirements were even worse. How could you get some kind of GER credit for taking a course on the Statistics of Baseball? I just chocked it up to the lack of institutional insight of a graduate student, so it’s nice to know that some faculty feel the same way.As a professor elsewhere, I worry that without basic coverage of the major areas of my field, my students won’t be prepared for graduate study. That doesn’t seem to be a concern at Emory. I guess the prestige of an undergrad degree from Emory goes a long way toward making up for holes in their knowledge.
drj50 - September 3, 2009 at 8:51 am
Mark offers two reasons that colleges don’t tighten gen ed requirements. There is a third. At least one faculty member has observed that the gen ed curriculum at my school is not an educational document, but a political one, designed to justify faculty positions particularly in disciplines that have few majors. I confess I find that awfully sad.
dank48 - September 3, 2009 at 8:59 am
I agree, Fossil. Btw, have you checked the comments on the blog about words we thought we knew the meaning of?
debrahumphreys - September 3, 2009 at 9:02 am
The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently conducted a survey of its members (including all types of colleges–public, private, 2-year, 4-year). We found that while the kind of general education program Bauerlein describes at Emory is still common–about 80% of colleges do use some kind of distribution system, what is far more common now is a hybrid model in which colleges allow some student choice, but also include other integrative elements (e.g. learning communities, common core courses, first-year seminars, senior capstones, etc.). Two-thirds of schools now use that kind of approach to provide students more meaningful and educationally effective general education experiences. More reform is certainly needed, but the ACTA study presents a very limited picture of what is actually going on among the vast majority of schools. For the full findings from the AAC&U study, see http://www.aacu.org/membership/membersurvey.cfm
ppowers - September 3, 2009 at 9:48 am
I think a big reason that the broad distribution system remains deeply entrenched is not simply student interests, but faculty interests desires and individuality. I’m not sure this is all bad, but it is surely the case that the current system allows faculty to teach a huge variety of things that represent their idiosyncratic concerns, and it’s kind of fun to do that. Much harder to agree with a bunch of other faculty that you’ll all give up 95% of what you like in order to teach a common set of texts. Faculty desire, as much or more than faculty politics, plays a role in the proliferation of electives.
markbauerlein - September 3, 2009 at 10:26 am
Good points on faculty interests driving the distributions, drj and ppowers.Thank you, debra, for linking to the AAC&U report. I would question, though, whether the “integrative elements” do, in fact, help with general education. If the first-year seminars and senior capstones are all over the place in terms of subject matter, many of them highly-specialized, then we have the same problem. Emory has a freshman seminar requirement, and the many choices have no “commonality.”
kriselliott - September 3, 2009 at 11:20 am
I believe that one of the reasons that students enter college woefully unskilled and undereducated is because public education in this country has tried to codify “essential knowledge” and thus teaches to ridiculous state mandated tests to prove that students have attained such knowledge. In so doing, the system fails to teach them how to become independent thinkers and learners and how to see and embrace the wonder of learning; it fails to give them a foundation that will afford them the skills necessary to make meaningful and personal connections between the disciplines in a core curriculum.
kriselliott - September 3, 2009 at 11:20 am
I believe that one of the reasons that students enter college woefully unskilled and undereducated is because public education in this country has tried to codify “essential knowledge” and thus teaches to ridiculous state mandated tests to prove that students have attained such knowledge. In so doing, the system fails to teach them how to become independent thinkers and learners and how to see and embrace the wonder of learning; it fails to give them a foundation that will afford them the skills necessary to make meaningful and personal connections between the disciplines in a core curriculum.
tomlinson - September 3, 2009 at 12:05 pm
In some states, the broad number of courses available to count for general education are the result of state efforts to ease transfer from one institution to another. As a result, state institutions are required to accept courses coming from other institutions as long as the fit the broad field.
tomlinson - September 3, 2009 at 12:05 pm
In some states, the broad number of courses available to count for general education are the result of state efforts to ease transfer from one institution to another. As a result, state institutions are required to accept courses coming from other institutions as long as the fit the broad field.
mbelvadi - September 3, 2009 at 1:14 pm
unusedusername: If students just want to acquire skills, and are competent adults to determine what they need, they can take the courses they want and walk away. But, if what they want is for the university, with its long-term reputation riding on the quality of its graduates as perceived by employers and the rest of the community, to *certify* the education they received as meeting that institution’s standards, which is what being granted a degree does, then it is reasonable for the university to impose strict requirements as to the content of the curriculum that must be passed in order to be granted that certification/degree. There is a fundamental tension between the goals of many undergrad students (to do as little work as necessary to be granted a degree that commands high prestige and salary in the employment market) and the degree-granting institution (to defend the long-term prestige of the degrees it awards). Not all students approach college this way, but enough do that it forces university curriculum committees to design their requirements to defend their institution against such intellectual free-loaders. Some succeed better than others.
unusedusername - September 3, 2009 at 2:15 pm
I enjoyed reading everyone’s comments. I’ll add a bit more: It is certainly true that a lot of students who walk into college lack what most of us would think of as rather basic knowledge. Unfortunately, as long as high schools graduate anyone with a pulse, and many colleges accept anyone with a high school diploma, this will continue to be a problem. Anytime I read an article about high school graduation rates, all anyone talks about is how we should be graduating a higher percentage of students. Never is the argument made that a high school diploma should indicate a fairly high level of knowedge, and not everyone is both smart enough and hard working enough to earn a diploma worthy of the name. Many parents scream if their kid fails out of high school, so we have dumbed down the curriculum so that anyone can pass. Someone needs to draw a line in the sand, and it might as well be us. Offer developmental courses to students that need them, but don’t let students start earning their 4-year degree until they have developed the all-around knowedge that makes them ready for college. Not everyone will be able to do it. That’s OK. A lot of people want to be pro-baseball players, but find out they can’t do it, and decide to do something else. If everyone who starts out as a college freshman is educated, distribution requirements are not necessary, and if a person is not educated, taking a few classes in college won’t help them much anyway.mbelvadi makes the point that some students try to get by with the minimum. To alleviate this, I have two points. First, I have no problem having requirements for a major. If someone wants a chemistry degree, they have to take organic chemistry, physical chemistry, ect. As long as all majors have a rigorous course load, students won’t be able to get a degree without taking some hard classes. Second, as long as all courses are taught at the college level, even elective classes will sometimes be challenging to students. I don’t think we need a common core to enfore rigor.
mcgadney - September 3, 2009 at 2:32 pm
22113683 – see Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s work on “emerging adulthood”.
goxewu - September 3, 2009 at 4:03 pm
1. In the old-old days, a much lower percentage of the population went to college. A good many kids left school at 16 and apprenticed in a trade. High school diplomas were a lot rarer and 18-year-olds with them figured their educations were finished and went right to work. Those were mostly boys. Girls got married and had children. Some of them, though, went to work in places like the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. The mostly male fraction who went off to college could afford to educate themselves in imitation of English gentlemen and study poetry and philosophy before they went into dad’s business or off to law, medical or divinity school.2. The literacy of a high school graduate in the old-old days was equal to, or better than, the literacy of the average college graduate today. I have letters from my late parents to prove it.3. In the old days when I went to college, in the wake of the GI Bill, the direct career-training started, with the men I knew majoring mostly in business administration, marketing, or advertising. Most of the women I knew were preparing to be teachers, nurses, etc. A good many of them were studying for their “MRS degrees.” Nowadays, that’s gone, and nearly everyone is studying to prepare themselves for some sort of occupation, the greatly expanded list of which now includes broadcast communications, green building, film and TV production, public health, criminology and a hundred others4. “unusedusername” utters an inconvenient truth when he or she says, “The main purpose of college is to learn a specific set of knowledge and skills that can be used in a career.” It may not be true in theory (i.e., in colleges’ pompous mission statements) or in the minds of the humanities faculty, but it’s true where it counts: on the ground, with students. Just ask them.5. These days, when typical college graduates carry away five figures of debt with their diplomas, it’s an absolute luxury to regard college as a gentleman’s/gentlewoman’s finishing school in cultural appreciation (in either a traditionalist or progressivist canon) on the way to further expensive education that’ll actually prepare the graduate for a job. In short, learning to appreciate the greatness of Trollope on the way to getting a job as a computer programmer is a rich person’s luxury.6. There aren’t enough jobs to go around, especially blue-collar jobs for high school graduates. It’s necessary for our society to warehouse a lot of 18-22-years olds. One of the places we warehouse them is in college.7. The reason why so many humanities professors have jobs is because so many students are in college. These students include a vast number–I’d guess half or more–who really aren’t qualified for legitimate college-level study. So, unless the professor complaining about the illiteracy/ignorance of his or her students is teaching at an Ivy, R1 university, or select liberal arts college, he or she ought to realize that those unqualified students are what’s putting food on the table.8. Yes, core requirements have gotten PC political. But also political is the requirement that, under the weak guise of an alleged universal citizenship necessity of being familiar with “the best that’s been thought or said” in Western culture, every Buddhist student of southeast Asian heritage, every Muslim student whose parents immigrated from the Middle East, and every Latino student from west of the Rockies has to know what Wordsworth contributed to English literature before he or she can become a doctor or a computer programmer.
primaryovertone - September 3, 2009 at 4:05 pm
unusedusername,Perhaps we should return to the idea that education is a priviledge. It can be offered at the Primary level to everyone but if they choose not to use their priviledge (either by quitting, being openly disruptive, or flunking out due to laziness) it will not be forced upon them. College level education and beyond would also be a priviledge that is earned based upon continued scholarship from High School forward. No more bird classes and hanging out in party schools for four years. Instead colleges and universities would be places of learning instead of debauchery. That is my two cents.
goxewu - September 3, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Yes, higher education is a PRIVILEGE.
skippster123 - October 1, 2009 at 9:32 am
I strongly disagree with the article regarding multi-tasking. I work on Wall Street. I have 4 monitors wrapped around my head. I have multiple IM’s going all day long, 15 or 20 browser windows open, emails, and legal documents staring me in the face. I could not function in the education system because the velocity of information was too slow for me to absorb, kinda of like listening to take recording with the batteries dying. However, in an environment of high velocity input I have almost a photo-graphic memory. Kids should know it’s ok to be like that and they can break out of the stima of being ADD and ADHD etc. see also http://www.cabf.org