Liberal knowledge is indispensable, and expert knowledge alone can be, and often is, dangerously impractical. To make it practical, expertise should always be explicitly related to the real-world political and cultural context that only liberal knowledge can provide. (MSE)

For perspective on the interdisciplinary challenge in higher education, it is important to understand the concept and origins of the "discipline." Disciplines are convenient but artificial constructs, and while academia may be divided into them, the world is not. A sense of the balance and connection between them is vital. (MSE)

Articles on literary canon include: "Educational Anomie" (Stephen W. White); "Why Western Civilization?" (William J. Bennett); "Peace Plan for Canon Wars" (Gerald Graff, William E. Cain); "Canons, Cultural Literacy, and Core Curriculum" (Lynne V. Cheney); "Canon Busting: Basic Issues" (Stanley…

In recent reports on improvement of the college curriculum, advocates of the liberal arts as the heart of a college education promise more than a liberal education can deliver, which is a solid foundation on which to build. (MSE)

Strategies for integrating engineering courses for nonmajors into the liberal arts curriculum are examined, and the potential problems are discussed. (MSE)

Throughout its history, American education has focused narrowly on practical and vocational issues and has ignored the need for intellectual development. The lesson is not yet fully learned, and an emphasis on critical thinking as a goal of education is only beginning to gather strength. (MSE)

The development of the college curriculum to include instruction in critical thinking is discussed, including the issue of discipline-specificity versus topic-specificity, defining general principles of critical thinking, transfer of principles, and inclusion of critical thinking at lower educational levels. (MSE)

The emerging field of leadership studies in higher education is discussed and the evolution, intent, and design of the University of Richmond (Virginia) Jepson School of Leadership Studies, scheduled to open in 1992, are described. The program will begin to remove leadership studies from the margin of academic endeavor. (MSE)

The cognitive skills approach to teaching college students, which seeks to train intelligence by explicitly developing learning and thinking skills, has been effectively used in the recent past and students taught by this method have spoken appreciatively of it. Intense verbal interaction is a distinctive feature of the approach. (MSE)

The renewed interest in interdisciplinary studies is producing different instructional approaches that are providing an important corrective to the limited and fragmented perspectives of the individual academic disciplines. Since they are in the curricular mainstream as requirements for all students, interdisciplinary offerings may have more…

The University of Utah offers an interdisciplinary, historically oriented humanities-science course, a modification and extension of the traditional Western Civilization course, in its honors program. The course has been successful for 12 years. (MSE)

Articles on the literary canon include: "Contingencies of Value" (Barbara Herrnstein Smith); "Canon Fodder, the Cultural Hustle, and the Minotaur" (R. T. Smith); "Curriculum Battles and Global Politics" (Betty Jean Craige); "The Feminist Challenge to the Canon" (Elizabeth Fox-Genovese); and "Education…

Philosophy is a basic subject that should be required in high school and in college. It is an essential element in an educated person's body of knowledge, interesting in its own right at the elementary level. (MSE)

In two decades and despite some resistance, multicultural education has progressed from an idea to a concept that has achieved some institutionalization in higher education. Demographic and global economic change reinforce this trend. Institutions of higher education should have as a primary objective the graduating of students who have not only…

Specific suggestions for reducing the emphasis placed on college athletics and increasing the emphasis on precollege and college academic standards are made. They include abolishing post-season training, reducing eligibility, increasing accountability for athlete graduation, and not accepting or recruiting academically deficient high school…