In 1986, an academic program review of the biological sciences programs of the universities in the State University of Florida System was performed by a team of 13 consultants. This report of that review includes: (1) the background of the review; (2) a statement of the status of biological science instruction; (3) a review of the 1978 assessment…

Information for colleges engaged in curricular reform about how other schools are managing the task is presented with the central device for organizing details being an imagined core of studies, 50 semester hours, that would encourage coherent and substantive learning in essential areas of knowledge. Rather than acting as a single prototype this…

A report on the undergraduate origins of PhD holders for the periods of 1920-1980 and 1970-1980 is presented. Its three goals are to show how many of each of the 1,200 U.S. colleges had graduates who earned the PhD during the two time periods; to calculate the proportion of each college's graduates who had earned the PhD during the two time…

Proceedings of the North Country Workshop on Science, Technology, and the Undergraduate Curriculum are presented. The Sloan Foundation's call for reform of the liberal arts and coverage of mathematics, science, and technology is noted in welcoming remarks by State University of New York, Potsdam, President Humphrey Tonkin. Stephen H. Cutcliffe…

Interdisciplinary programs at nine colleges and universities are described. An introductory essay, "Reflections from an Interdisciplinary Milieu," by Donald N. Levine discusses the benefits of an interdisciplinary emphasis for undergraduate education. The following programs are featured: Bowdoin College's environmental studies program;…

This document presents a profile of projects funded by the University of Wisconsin System Undergraduate Teaching Improvement Grant program. Three hundred and five one-page abstracts of awards made by the program are provided that briefly summarize the original proposal and the latest results that have been drawn from the project director's reports…

The core curriculum at Saint Joseph's College is described, along with the revision of the general education program during 1966-1969. The core program, which is integrative in structure, was adopted because it provided a means to achieve the goals of the institution, a Catholic liberal arts college. The change to the core curriculum required…

The relationship between college grades and achievement of college graduates was studied at Winona State University, Minnesota. The following criteria for investigating this relationship were assessed: quality of vocational achievement, acceptance of responsibility in social groups, and further intellectual development. These criteria were…

Data on summer and fall 1981 enrollments in Pennsylvania colleges and universities are presented, including a brief narrative section on trends. Detailed statistical tables cover the following: enrollments by enrollment status and by sex, fall 1972-1981; total enrollments by type of institution, fall 1972-1981; enrollments by level of study, fall…

Results are presented of a survey designed (1) to discover which universities throughout the world (Africa, North America, South America, Central America, Asia, Australia, and Europe) provide courses in adult education as a field of study and (2) to facilitate discussion at a 1970 international conference. An introduction describes conditions of…

Indices and manifestations of quality in undergraduate education are considered and a four-part framework is developed. Context indices represent institutional characteristics that remain relatively stable over time (e.g., expenditures per student and size of student body), while input indices reflect characteristics of entering students (e.g.,…

A research-oriented project to improve the effectiveness of undergraduate education at the state University of Antwerp, Belgium, is described, and the higher education system and conditions in Belgium are noted. Attention was focused on the outcome-based paradigm, according to which the primary goal of instruction is to ensure that all students…

The main features of courses taught according to the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) as described by Keller are reviewed, along with the use of repeated testing and undergraduate tutors. The PSI approach is also evaluated in terms of final exam performance, study behavior, and student ratings, based on a study conducted at York…

The graduation rates of the fall semester freshman classes that entered the Indiana University Bloomington (IU) campus between 1970-1977 (excluding 1973) were examined, and the results of a 1975 survey were extended. In addition, the current analysis examines the graduation rate of each class in relation to student race and sex, and new…

The academic program review process that accounts for conceptual properties of loose coupling is analyzed, and organizational theory literature is reviewed with regard to program review and loose coupling. In addition, the academic program review process used at Ohio State University is described in detail, and the elements of loose coupling…