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[irhack]

http://chronicle.com/article/Group-Offers-Alternative/48086/

The website discussed in the article is at http://whatwilltheylearn.com/ .

I just glanced at a few colleges, including my alma mater, and cannot make sense of this groups definition of "gen ed requirements." My alma mater certainly required courses from each of the categories listed, yet according to this site only has requirements in two. Apparently the other categories do not have requirements that are rigid enough. Frankly, I believe that is in the college's favor. What nonsense.

[dolljepopp]

Mods, how about a free link?

[notaprof]

Mods, how about a free link?

No free link I can provide but Inside Higher Ed has an article on the rankings that mentions this:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/20/rankings

[irhack]

And check out the website itself, the second link I give. I'm interesting in other people's take on this--especially since my college is examining its gen ed requirements as we speak.

[voxprincipalis]

Frankly, I think it's ridiculous -- NOT because I don't think that all of those are part of being a well-rounded and educated citizen of the world, but because the whole idea and the way it's being presented are off-target.

The "What Will They Learn" website basically says that any school that does not require students to take courses meeting their specific criteria (which, if you read the InsideHigherEd article, are extremely rigidly constructed) is in essence doing a poor job of educating students. It completely fails to take into account that not all approaches to education at the college level value the breadth they are looking for; in some kinds of programs, time spent out of the major is perceived as wasted time. Sure, that leads to a different kind of education, but if the outcome you're measuring is "will they be able to get a job afterwards?" (which is what I understand "whether the colleges you're considering prepare their graduates to succeed after graduation" actually means), then in some fields, yes, they will be able to get jobs, and so they will succeed, even if they haven't had this breadth of education.

Even if you were to limit the schools examined to SLACs, which presumably have agreed to uphold this sort of breadth requirement (as part of offering a "liberal arts" education), there are multiple ways to go about this. And who is to say that the categories they have named are either necessary or sufficient, or that the way in which they have drawn the categories is appropriate and will lead to the demonstrated outcomes they want? Obviously, as someone in an arts field, I might also be expected to say "where is the arts requirement?", but also -- what about world history? (Specifically, non-US history.) What about business? What about Psychology (outside of their definition of it)? Sociology? Religious studies? Political science? Etc., etc., etc., etc.

I have lots of other objections (the one above isn't even the most important one), but I'll stop here before I *really* get into ranting.

VP

[svenc]

One can definitely criticize the intent of these ratings, but it seems that even if one shares this group's mindset, the methodology may be very flawed.

At least 20 years ago, my undergraduate alma mater had VERY specific (and rather traditional) requirements for its arts & sciences students, yet it has an F grade here.  I was required to take western history, politics, economics, composition, show mastery in a foreign language, etc. etc.  I suppose it's possible that things have changed, but I'm guessing the real issue for this group is that these curricula aren't institution-wide requirements?

Specifically, I think the issue is that the engineers and pre-meds aren't being forced to take as many general ed requirements.   Does anyone else have a sense of how this plays out for the purposes of this group's rankings?

[scampster]

Specifically, I think the issue is that the engineers and pre-meds aren't being forced to take as many general ed requirements.   Does anyone else have a sense of how this plays out for the purposes of this group's rankings?

I thought it was interesting that it say my alma mater has a Foreign Language Requirement. As an engineer, I did not have to take any foreign language. So either they are just referring to the Arts and Sciences school or they are flat out wrong. I did graduate ten years ago, but you'd be hard pressed to find many engineering programs with foreign language requirements (not that it wouldn't be useful, I just haven't encountered it between the three engineering programs I have been in).

I agree with VP on it's ridiculousness. For example, Grinnell College has zero requirements that meet their definitions. But you'd have to work hard to convince me that a Grinnell grad is poorly educated.

[irhack]

Yes, to go into more detail, my alma mater, top 10 SLAC gets a D. They dismiss their Math and Science requirements because students can take courses that are either Math or Science. However,as I recall I was required to take three courses within this category--and it is very difficult to manage that without taking both. This is true for other requirements as well. While my alma mater did not require econ or history, those were covered under other categories, and it was extremely difficult to avoid taking those courses in fulfilling your other requirements (I took courses in both and believe me, would not have done so if I could have avoided it).

[inthelab]

Yes, to go into more detail, my alma mater, top 10 SLAC gets a D. They dismiss their Math and Science requirements because students can take courses that are either Math or Science. However,as I recall I was required to take three courses within this category--and it is very difficult to manage that without taking both. This is true for other requirements as well. While my alma mater did not require econ or history, those were covered under other categories, and it was extremely difficult to avoid taking those courses in fulfilling your other requirements (I took courses in both and believe me, would not have done so if I could have avoided it).

They gave my alma mater an F because students can choose what math AND science AND lit to take, and because the writing course is not called Intro Comp but has a unique name.  My younger one goes there now. She refused to go to a state college, which has a laundry list of required survey courses because, as she put it, it's so high school. 

Noticed that the pres of ACTA sends her kid to Harvard despite its D grade.

[malcha]

Ah, yes, let us choose one single and highly debatable criterion on which to rank universities, define that criterion arbitrarily, and then apply it messily and apparently inconsistently.  I can't see this as anything but a waste of time and effort.  I do think that whether and what kind of gen ed requirements a place has is a relevant question if you are choosing an undergrad institution, though for myself  would put it to the opposite use and weight in favor of less rigidly defined requirements, but how can you possibly justify making that the one, definitive curricular question?  

When I was deciding on colleges, it was important to me to have a wide range of odd courses in obscure subjects.  This inclined me towards larger research universities rather than smaller, liberal arts colleges.  But it would be insane to rank places that offered Middle Welsh to undergraduates with an A and places that didn't with a D and expect that to be a reasonable scale for everyone's decision.  I missed a lot of advantages I might have gotten from a SLAC.  I got a lot of advantages I wouldn't have gotten from a SLAC.  Also, I am allergic to the sort of core humanities course that is very important to, say, Columbia and Chicago.  That doesn't means such courses are a Bad Thing and we should all shun them, it means Columbia or Chicago would have been a bad choice for me.  So I am all in favor of having good sources of comparative information on curricular questions, but for it to be useful it would have to cover a range of curricular issues, and what it would be useful for would not be rankings of quality but choices of kind and style of education.  

[aandsdean]

Yes, to go into more detail, my alma mater, top 10 SLAC gets a D. They dismiss their Math and Science requirements because students can take courses that are either Math or Science. However,as I recall I was required to take three courses within this category--and it is very difficult to manage that without taking both. This is true for other requirements as well. While my alma mater did not require econ or history, those were covered under other categories, and it was extremely difficult to avoid taking those courses in fulfilling your other requirements (I took courses in both and believe me, would not have done so if I could have avoided it).

My alma mater, also a top-10 SLAC, got a C for a number of the same reasons.  For example, it doesn't require composition.  But realisitically, if you have a mean SAT score in the mid-1400s (traditional scale, not the new 3-parter), how badly are most of your students going to need comp as it's conceived of for a place such as the one where I am now, with a mean ACT in the 22.5 area?  (roughly comparable to a 1020 SAT score...)

Moreover, more selective institutions tend to have students with more intellectual curiosity, and they're a lot likelier than average to take courses just for interest (I did, for sure).  They also have less rigid requirements for other reasons--lower teaching loads for faculty make creating and staffing a prescriptive gen ed program exceedingly difficult, for instance, and the kind of faculty who teach at a place like Swarthmore are unlikely to be thrilled teaching remedial world history.

It's nutty.  It presumes that every institution is fundamentally the same, and that they should approach educating drastically different students in basically the same way...

[malcha]

Not to mention differences in high school education.  I had excellent US history and government courses in high school; what further education I needed in those areas wasn't a basic survey course.  OTOH, my European and non-Western history background was much weaker; it would have been really stupid to take a course that could have been devoted to one of those and force me to use it for a basic US survey.

OK, I'll stop saying how stupid this is now, but it's really stupid.  Also, it doesn't seem to cover a very wide range of places.  The obvious top SLACs are there, but neither of the two obscure little SLACs I've taught at are in their database.

[dr_strangelove]

A little clicking on that site yields Berkeley: F, Northwestern: F, Swarthmore: F, Amherst: F. Parents, please don't let your children attend any of these clearly deficient institutions.

[kedves]

The What Will They Learn List strikes me as arbitrary to the point of crackpottedness.  They don't bother to justify their choice of desired courses and versions of those courses (U.S. history must be entire, not period- or place-specific? why economics particularly? why not world history? what if students place out of comp?, etc.).  Where's the evidence that these are the courses which benefit students most, or the reasoning that these are the courses that students need to take to achieve some goal?  What goal?  "Competitiveness and innovation"?  Everyone says that.  If you're serious, why not give points for Spanish, Arabic, or Chinese but not for French or German?

My undergrad giant state school and grad private fancy school both get a D.  I took all those courses as an undergrad except comp.  We also had a lot of other distribution requirements--arts, other cultures, etc.--which I think are typical of general education requirements everywhere, just not the ones this What Will They outfit prefers.

But--my current university has no general math requirement at all, and it shows.  Some math should be required.

[inthelab]

Not to mention differences in high school education.  I had excellent US history and government courses in high school; what further education I needed in those areas wasn't a basic survey course.  OTOH, my European and non-Western history background was much weaker; it would have been really stupid to take a course that could have been devoted to one of those and force me to use it for a basic US survey.

That touches on another point: the prevalence of AP classes in high school.  One may have taken AP US history, scored a 4 or 5 (and maybe gets no college credit for it depending upon ultimate choice of college), and is now reasdy to move onto a special topic in US history, or non-US history.