The idea of general education has ebbed and flowed for generations. Recent calls for general education, appearing both in the professional and popular literature, demand an integrative curriculum that brings people toward common understandings. The content of what is taught matters less than that a continual effort be made to enhance social…

The extent to which U.S. colleges and universities contribute to the fulfillment of students' lives is discussed by Secretary of Education William Bennett in an address to Harvard University. Secretary Bennett's observations are based on his experiences as a law student, freshman proctor, and tutor at Harvard University, as well as his subsequent…

Although recent American educational practices have stressed the right to be independent, it is thought that education must find ways to affirm independence and interdependence. By focusing curricula on a common heritage as well as current concerns with communication, social institutions, and vocation, students can live wisely in the future.…

Program discontinuance at colleges and universities is often linked to issues of program demand and quality. However, neither low demand nor low quality is sufficient for program discontinuance without a judgment on the criterion of the centrality of the program to the institution's core mission. Colleges' retrenchment and survival mechanisms…

Current curricula in institutions of higher education are criticized in this speech for their lack of a common core of education. Several possibilities for developing such a common core include education centered around our common heritage and the challenges of the present. It is suggested that all students must be introduced to the events,…

Revised general education (GE) curricula at two community colleges are described in an effort to illustrate the outcomes of a "telic" curriculum revision based on: (1) the collective identification of the purposes of GE by an institution's faculty, and (2) the design of a GE curriculum which reconciles those identified purposes with the…

Trends in higher education are sketched with attention directed to the role of the humanities and the community college sector. In light of declining enrollments, financial problems, and other bleak projections, it is suggested that fostering diversity is needed for continued vitality and productivity. Four areas of diversity of concern are: the…