In this article, the author discusses the public discourse on education. On that subject, Republicans and Democrats speak the same language--and so, with striking uniformity, do more and more college and university leaders. The view of teaching and learning as an economic driver is a limited one, which puts at risk America's most distinctive…

During a review of undergraduate programs at the University of California at Los Angeles, Judith L. Smith, vice provost for undergraduate education, was struck by an uncomfortable realization: Too many majors demanded too little from students. Some students could graduate without ever taking a senior seminar or completing a substantial research…

Sun Yat-sen University's East-meets-West curriculum is distinctive, but its embrace of liberal education--education across disciplines, meant to provoke broad thinking--is far from unusual. At a time when China and its East Asian neighbors are trouncing U.S. students on international exams, educators in these countries are nonetheless adopting,…

Tensions between the military and the university are hardly new or surprising; after all, the two institutions embrace different cultures, procedures, and purposes. But they managed to coexist in a dynamic tension until the antiwar movement of the 1960s severed the relationship at many colleges, opening a gap that persists to this day. Consider…

In a statement issued in July, "Rebuilding Campus Community: the Wrong Imperative," the National Association of Scholars calls for exactly the right thing--a renewal of liberal education, that broad and deep education beyond students' majors on campuses--but misses the point about what is needed to achieve it. Claiming that liberal education has…

How should one think about assessment in general education--or what is sometimes called liberal education--in the pluralistic environment of American higher education? Generalizations about longitudinal collegiate assessment are difficult, not least because of the remarkable range of four-year institutions and the students who attend them.…

As the director of a new general-education program at the Roman Catholic university where he teaches, the author recently spent time introducing their curriculum to a variety of campus constituencies. On two occasions, members of their Board of Trustees asked him how the new courses would contribute to students' religious development and to the…

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…

This article reports that a Virginia Tech professor whose wife was among 32 people killed by a student gunman last year will become director of the university's new Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention. Jerzy Nowak will give up his job as chairman of Tech's horticulture department to take the new post on July 1. His wife, Jocelyne…

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 movement to improve the quality of general education (the common courses taken by students outside their majors) continues. Change is difficult because it is resisted by a significant number of faculty. Experiences at the University of Wyoming and the University of Washington are described. (MLW)

At the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges, Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, charged that students are not required to devote adequate time to general education. Changing the way the major is organized, he said, is difficult because change goes against in-grained traditions and structures. (MLW)

The Meiklejohn Education Foundation conference, "Liberal Education in the Age of the Computer," is discussed. Several professors believe that computers are friends to facts, but can be the enemies of ideas. There was also some fear that education suffers from a deluge of data that the computer age had brought. (MLW)

In an effort to combat juvenile speech patterns of "mallspeak" and engage students in intelligent conversation, classes in oral communication are appearing among the general education requirements at colleges, and speaking-intensive classes are emerging in all disciplines. Communications faculty feel the skills should be taught within their…