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…

This article reports that Temple University, like several other urban institutions, has revamped its core curriculum to focus on its location. The "Creative Spirit" course, which fills the university's arts requirement, is one of about 30 courses in Temple's new core curriculum that are taking students off the campus and into the heart…

Educators have been giving much-needed attention recently to innovations in the standard M.B.A. and the undergraduate business curriculum. Most notable has been the integration of fundamental courses in the core curriculum--finance, marketing, accounting--to emphasize a more-realistic team approach to learning, and to reflect that managers do not…

Should the 21st-century university have a core curriculum? The report of the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education said nothing about general education, the learning that educated Americans should share. Instead the Spellings commission report highlighted broad access and measurable "value added" as the major…

In this article, the author discusses the importance of liberal arts education in the preparation of soldiers for war. He draws on his experiences teaching students from Army and Air Force ROTC programs and on Elizabeth D. Samet's book "Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature through Peace and War at West Point" to illuminate the purpose served by…

Since 2003, more than 40 athletics programs have joined the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) ranks. Membership now represents about 500 colleges, and Wayne Baker, the group's executive director, expects to keep adding colleges. Membership in the association began declining slightly in the early 1990s, as private two-year…

At the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities called for a new core curriculum that she said would bring more coherence to undergraduate education. Wayne Booth discussed an institution caught up in its ambitions. (MLW)

As the late Williams Sloane Coffin wryly observed that most churches and colleges were once wed and then most got divorced. Is it possible that a remarriage is in the works between these two estranged partners--and, of all places, at "Godless Harvard"? This article talks about cohabitation between the study and the practice of religion from a…

The article examines the controversy between traditionalists and multiculturalists in revising the literary canon, and advocates replacement of traditionalist assumptions of universalism in literature with recognition of the various identities of readers, especially in light of substantial bodies of work by minority writers. (DB)

E. D. Hirsch in his book "Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know" sees gaps in common cultural information as the leading cause of illiteracy. Hirsch compiles nearly 5,000 facts and figures that represent what literate Americans need to know. (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)

Citing a severe decline in academic standards due to political and social influences, a group of conservative scholars criticizes the "radicalization" of the college curriculum and danger to academic freedom. (MSE)

A Wellesley College (Massachusetts) requirement that students take at least one course on a non-European culture is being reevaluated by faculty. Some feel the requirement is vague, and both conservatives and liberals express concern over emphasis on multiculturalism. (MSE)

The National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division II voted to adopt academic standards for freshman athletes that are identical to those in effect in Division I. Officials of Black colleges opposed the inclusion of standardized-test scores in the regulations. The roll-call vote is provided. (MLW)

At a recent conference, it was proposed that college teaching will be considered a scholarly activity only when professors conceptualize pedagogy as tightly linked to scholarship, that the core curriculum provides an opportunity to communicate about pedagogy, and that faculty should discuss instruction as freely as they do research. (MSE)