<p>The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has on their website "WhatWillTheyLearn.com" yet another misguided attempt to compartmentalize colleges into nice, neat rankings. In op-ed piece linked above, David Azerrad, a senior researcher, at ACTA discusses this "worrisome" trend in the education of young people. He notes that none of the top 20 national universities ranked by the U.S. News & World Report require a U.S. History requirement.* Azerrad goes on to criticize schools such as Stanford for allowing a Native American class and a cultural class on baseball in America take the place of a civics class.** </p>
<p>This is one example of a painfully obvious fact: these rankings, this idea is antiquated. It is based on subject areas, rather than acquiring skills, the latter of which we need in this country. Now, I could go on criticizing specific points, but it all comes back to the need of different rankings systems to put everything in a nice compartment and be able to say that this is an A school and this is a B school. So, yes there is some value in what ACTA is trying to do here, but it should merely be a small piece of a larger framework that high school students use. </p>
<p><em>I find this particularly ironic, because it reaffirms the notion that the USNWRnot ACTAs, not Forbes rankings, etc.--are the gold standard in society.
*</em>This is also amusing, because the last thing we need is people citing our founding fathers rhetoric what we need is students focusing on sciences, technology, and mathematics, where we are severely lagging behind the rest of the world. What good is appreciating the revolution and our liberty, when we are importing everything from China and not producing anything as a country?</p>
<p>This is ridiculous. It says that Clemson doesn’t require a history or economics class for general education. </p>
<p>We require 2 social science classes in 2 different fields but it doesn’t necessarily have to be history or economics. It could be political science and anthropology.</p>
Exactly my point. I wrote a letter to them about some of the information and they just wanted to split hairs. Most schools give you a choice, but you do have to take a few social science classes. In the response, I was told that if an English class would be given no credit “because single-author or niche courses may satisfy the Literatures divisional requirement.” What? </p>
<p>How arbitrary is that? It is just misleading when the justifications do not even make sense, just so that can make a neat little package that “evaluates” colleges. I just do not understand how public policy types and advocates who are being funded by the government, know what is “best” for students. They are merely trying to oversimplify everything, and as government agencies love to do: employ a one size fits all policy.</p>
<p>If you want to take courses in all of those subjects, take courses in all of those subjects. Wow, that’s a tough concept. This is useless for prospective students.</p>
<p>OP, ACTA did not attempt to rank universities. The author merely choose a commonly used ranking to illustrate his point that none of those universities have an American history requirement. I don’t think that reaffirms that the USNWR rankings are the gold standard. </p>
<p>ACTA promotes a conservative philosophy about general education and the author’s viewpoint is consistent with this. While I don’t necessarily agree with their solution for general education, even a passing awareness of current American politics amply demonstrates that an awful lot of people in this country are ill-educated about the Constitution and related matters. These matters continue to be an ongoing source of political conflict today, just as they were in 1790. While I agree that we need to improve education in science, math, and technology, I don’t find it amusing in the least that so many are also ignorant of basic matters of civic knowledge.</p>
<p>That website is extremely misleading, if not plain wrong. For example, for my school, it shows that the only requirement is composition…which is false. While we may not have a specific ‘history’ class you are required to take, you need 8 credits of classes that fall under the category of “textual and historical studies”.
Basically history.
Some of which need to be focused on Social or Cultural Diversity</p>
<p>And then theres the natural science category, social science, language and arts…all need 8 credits each. So you really can’t get out of taking some kind of science class</p>
<p>Unless what they want is a single specific class everyone is forced to take?</p>
<p>UCLA earned a ‘C’ while Berkeley earned an ‘F’. The state of California dictates required general education coursework at both schools. They have the same standards.</p>
<p>Look at the list of A schools…Baylor, Texas A&M, UT-Austin, University of Arkansas and the military academies…definitely a strong conservative slant.</p>
<p>I feel like earning an F should be a proud accomplishment. Schools not coercing students into taking classes unnecessary to their ambitions or career goals? What a foreign concept.</p>
<p>Looks like ACTA needs to hire a fact-checker. For example (in addition to the factual errors mentioned above), they assert that the University of Chicago has no foreign language requirement, when in fact it has a proficiency requirement for all students. ACTA also dings Chicago for lack of US history and economics requirements. As far as I know, Chicago has never had specific American history or economics requirements; however, both subjects are covered in Core courses. Typically, you would not march through a time line of U.S. history, but would read and discuss 17th-18th c European political philosophy (Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau), the Federalist Papers, maybe some key Supreme Court opinions. The emphasis is on concepts, texts, and methods, not on rehashing events that should have been covered in elementary and high school. We all benefit from revisiting those events continually if we want to be conversant in American history and politics … but that is a life-long learning process that can’t be satisfied once and for all by a couple of college survey courses. So, I think ACTA is right to examine the issue of general education in colleges, but they seem to be doing it in a fairly sloppy and superficial way (if the examples in this thread are any indication.)</p>
<p>Imagine doing a restaurant ranking called “What Will they Eat?” We’d find that our top-ranked restaurants would be airplanes and the frozen dinner section of the Kroger since they give you a main course, two veggies, and a dessert in an inclusive take-it-or-leave-it format. The lowest-ranked restaurants would be the fine dining establishments of the world where the menu is a la carte!</p>