Assessing the Reform of General Education

A vigorous debate about the quality of undergraduate education has been taking place in the national media and on college campuses. It focuses on the curriculum, especially general education, that part of the curriculum that is required of all students. Calls for reform have been sounded by national reports, best-selling authors, and a range of critics. Some of the better-known institutions of higher learning, such as Harvard and Stanford universities, have responded with curricular revisions that have generated controversy in the national press. But it is not clear to what extent the broad range of colleges and universities have changed their general education curricula. What kinds of changes are undergraduate colleges making in their curricula, and what are the consequences?

The project on General Education attempted to answer these questions. A national sample of chief academic officers of 305 colleges and universities was surveyed in January 1990. The institutions were selected because they were thought to have made some kind of change in general education during the last decade. The sample included approximately the same proportion of each type of college in the country, according to the Carnegie classification system, with two important exceptions. The exceptions are that community colleges were underrepresented, and professional and specialized institutions were omitted altogether. The sample includes approximately 10 percent of all colleges and universities in the United States, 20 percent of the four-year institutions. To blunt any regional effects on curriculum change, every state was represented in the survey. Responses were received from 226 institutions, a response rate of 74 percent.

The questionnaire included both structured and open-ended questions about descriptions of the general education program, special features of the curriculum, faculty development activities, the amount of change planned and achieved, and consequences of the new program, among others. Respondents were asked to send copies of institutional reports on their programs, promotional brochures, evaluations, and any other information they believed effectively described their programs of study.

Types of Changes

What are the "reformed" programs like, and how have they changed? Changes in the structure of the curriculum were quite common. A total of 153 colleges, 68 percent of the sample, reported changing the distribution system, mainly by adding requirements, tightening them, and making them more specific. New types of courses, such as freshman or senior seminars, were added at 144 (64 percent) of the institutions. Interdisciplinary "core" courses were increased at 52 percent of the colleges. As is apparent from the percentages, most colleges made more than one kind of change.

Changing graduation or admissions requirements was another area of activity. A total of 54 percent of the colleges were reported to have changed graduation requirements, typically by raising them and making them more specific (e.g., by requiring a course in history rather than two social science courses that may or may not include history). And 35 percent of the institutions reported changing admissions requirements, usually by raising them. By raising requirements, colleges were attempting to set higher expectations and standards for students.

Some colleges worked to improve individual courses, either in lieu of altering the graduation requirements or the structure of the curriculum, or in addition to these other changes. A total of 175, or 77 percent, of the deans reported that their colleges had stressed certain skills, such as writing or critical thinking, "across the curriculum." Incorporation of "new scholarship" on such topics as gender and global studies was reported at 64 percent of the colleges, and revision of introductory or other courses was done at 57 percent of the sample. Increased attention to "the canon," which has been a hot topic in the debate, was found in only 24 percent of the cases, although many courses relied more heavily on primary texts.

One other arena of activity has been faculty development. Some colleges sought to rejuvenate general...