Einstein was blessed with a rare genius. He also understood the intellectual weight of a flight of fancy. He turned over the idea in his mind for a decade before concluding that the light beam next to him would appear to be at rest even though it was traveling at the speed of light. While it may be tempting to focus on Einstein's cognitive…

The very idea of discussing the foreign-language requirement for graduate degrees in English is enough to drive faculty members back to their offices to grade first-year composition papers. How can they bear to hear yet again the responsible and powerful arguments in favor of the requirement--and the practical arguments against it? If they have…

The Vermont college has radically revamped its class structure to better prepare students for life beyond the lecture halls. The collegewide program, "Education in 3 Dimensions," centers on three main parts: life-skills workshops, an interdisciplinary core curriculum, and professional courses. Required courses make up all three…

"Cultural literacy" has been hotly debated ever since E.D. Hirsch Jr.'s best seller of that name injected the desideratum into the culture wars in 1987. Today religious illiteracy is at least as pervasive as cultural illiteracy, and certainly more dangerous. Religious illiteracy is more dangerous because religion is the most volatile…

The author advocates for less, rather than more, research on alternative medicine. From a historical perspective, there is little newsworthy about public infatuation with what Bausell terms pseudomedicine. What is new is the role of institutions such as the National Institutes of Health, who now awards both research and educational grants in…

As at many two-year colleges around the country, the pass rate among Montgomery County Community College students who take remedial-math classes, which cover material students are typically expected to master in high school, is much lower than school officials would like. Of the roughly 1,350 new students at Montgomery County who took a…

The article describes a two-year, interdisciplinary humanities core requirement, "Portraits of Human Greatness." Established in 1977-78 at St. Anselm College (New Hampshire), this course requires freshmen and sophomores to study groups or individuals in Western Civilization in a lecture/seminar format with extensive reading and writing…

This article reports the split of Americans on requiring students to take more courses in math and science. In a survey findings released by the American Council on Education, Americans are divided about whether college students need to study more mathematics and science to preserve America's global economic competitiveness. According to David…

A growing number of institutions, prompted by pressures from minority groups, racial tension on campuses, and concerns that students are leaving college unprepared to live in an ethnically diverse nation, are requiring students to take courses that explore issues relating to race. Hurdles facing these requirements are discussed. (MLW)

Reports on efforts at California State University to limit remedial instruction through such measures as requiring students to complete all remedial work before their sophomore year and working with high schools to align placement testing and high school curricula. Critics suggest students are being punished for attending high schools that failed…

The New Jersey Project: Integrating the Scholarship on Gender seeks to change fundamentally what and how students learn by incorporating issues of gender into college courses. University of Arizona students are required to complete a course that deals with issues of gender, race, or class. (MLW)

A "Culture, Ideas, and Values" requirement with goals similar to those of an existing freshman program including works by women and minorities, will be initiated at Stanford University but without a fixed reading list. The faculty has been embroiled in debate for two years. (MLW)

The trend toward including instruction in critical and logical thinking as a required element in the college curriculum, and the various approaches to teaching it, are discussed. (MSE)

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (New York) is requiring all of its 1,000 freshmen to take required calculus courses utilizing the "Maple" computer program which can perform computations and quickly plot graphs. The program is intended to free students from meaningless manipulations and focus on concepts. Most students have reacted…

In March, after two years of debate that followed complaints by minority students, Stanford's faculty voted to replace the university's year-long Western culture requirement with a new requirement called "Cultures, Ideas and Values." Courses will be required to give attention to the issues of race, gender, and class. (MLW)