As many national commissions and observers have noted, the past forty years have brought unprecedented declines in humanities enrollments and programs in U.S. higher education. These changes are particularly striking in the iconic academic heart of the enterprise, the four-year college sector, where many institutions have diversified curricular…

Derrida's account of Kant's and Schelling's writings on the origins of the modern university are interpreted to show that theoretical positions attempting to oversee and master the contemporary university find themselves destabilized or deconstructed. Two examples of contemporary attempts to install the liberal arts as the guardians and overseers…

The target of present-day curriculum revivalists is the curriculum that came into being in the late 1960s. The purpose of the reform is to restore a sense of a shared or common culture among undergraduates and thus among the leaders of American society. (MLW)

An extensive study of humanities education in the nation's public schools, commissioned by the United States Congress, concludes that history, literature, and languages are inadequately taught, and most students fail to learn important knowledge about their shared past and culture. Data from a nation-wide survey reveal gross ignorance of major…

Physical education is in danger of being overwhelmed with specialized, technically-oriented career programs. The humanities may be abandoned as a curricular center of influence. An argument for keeping philosophy in the curriculum is made because it stimulates self-examination, helps resolve professional issues, and provides a means for better…

Recounts the history of general education requirements as developed at the University of Chicago by President Robert Hutchins, and the subsequent, much protested, relaxation of those stringent requirements in the 1990s. Suggests that each generation of educators must find the proper balance between traditional requirements and external forces and…

Rather than return to a core curriculum that reflects the structures of knowledge and education developed for other contexts and needs, the humanities should create new structures appropriate to the students', culture's, and faculty's needs today, particularly through interdisciplinary collaboration. (MSE)

The state of undergraduate general education is examined with particular emphasis on the trend toward providing a common core curriculum for college students. A decline in the number of degrees awarded in the traditional liberal arts fields is noted with a corresponding increase in recent years in the number of degrees awarded in…

Debate over the Stanford University (California) freshman humanities requirement, hailed by some as the birth of multiculturalism, by others as the death of the Western canon, has been rekindled as Stanford reconsiders its curriculum. Some consider possible changes a political, not academic, action. Reformers favor focusing on development of…

The theme of this journal issue is "Institutional Renewal." Projects designed to address the issues of the 1980s at 18 colleges are described, and 15 definitions of institutional renewal are presented. Participating colleges were provided expert advice through the Association of American College's (AAC) Project Lodestar (renamed…

This collection of 26 papers focuses on interdisciplinarity and its impact on the core or general education curriculum at postsecondary institutions. The papers include: "Professing or Instructing: Outstanding Challenges in the Task of Facilitating Student Reflection on Identity as Individual, as Family Member, and as Citizen" (Steve R. Gordy and…