<p>A lot of the people in power ARE broadly educated. I don’t see how that has cut down on the world’s problems. Character has a lot to do with it, not just education. </p>
<p>Not in the manner that they would be in my perfect world. Refer back to the specific courses I want people to take. Those are NOT generally mandated GEs. </p>
<p>I think I see your point, that you want people to be able to think ethically and not just be mindless drones. I agree that that is good, it’s just how do you get people to be that way. I would doubt that any college curriculum could really teach those things to someone who wasn’t that way already, but you can certainly disagree with me on that. And, like @WasatchWriter pointed out, it is hard to tell when gen eds are really doing their job. I mean, who decides that makes a big difference in the outcome. </p>
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- There is no logic in the part of my post that you quoted. The logic is in the longer part. That’s sort of what tl;dr means. :)</p>
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<li><p>I hope you don’t think I oppose the teaching of GE. I have tried to make it clear twice in this thread that I am in favor of good GE instruction. I even agree with your posts on this thread; I don’t know why that is not clear.</p></li>
<li><p>Of course we can’t know the ultimate outcome. But we can assess the basic outcomes that too many people uncritically assume are being reached. There are excellent tools doing that.</p></li>
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<p>Thank you for the clarification and your input. I know you support GE. </p>
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<p>Actually, engineering/STEM majors usually end up taking the humanities/social science equivalent of “rocks for jocks” or “physics for poets” courses to fulfill their GEs. Some examples I’ve seen from a variety of college catalogs:</p>
<p>History of the Automobile, Computers & Society, Techology & Ethics, etc. Most such courses have what I’d consider exceedingly light reading loads( < 100-180…less than a typical reading load for 101-level social science/humanities courses majors) and have many more multiple choice/short answer type assessments rather than essays…especially > 8 pages. </p>
<p>And even then, I hear my STEM major friends at other colleges whine about having to write 3-5 page papers. Ironic considering I was writing 8-10+ page papers routinely in high school at a STEM public magnet. </p>
<p>Each time I heard them whinging about that, I’d point out that if they felt that way, they have no grounds to make fun of “humanities/social science” majors for not wanting to take higher-level STEM courses when they’re complaining of doing less than the bare minimum humanities/social science majors are expected to take in their 101-level courses. </p>
<p>Incidentally, one reason why engineering schools require the amount of social science/humanities courses they do was because some decades ago, there were so many complaints from employers about engineering grads having abysmal written communication skills and issues dealing with non-technical colleagues/clients/public that ABET and engineering deans felt something had to be done. One former supervisor who was an engineering graduate mentioned his incoming freshman class was one of the first to be held to the new humanities/social science GE requirements. </p>
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<p>If you were designing a GE program for bachelor’s degree students from scratch, what would you include in it and require of courses that satisfy parts of it?</p>
<p>I’m a firm believer in a core curriculum and a broad liberal arts education. I was a management major in college and have 30 hours of engineering and hard science (part of the core) as well as history, law, english, foreign language…</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus I hope you understand I can only approach this in a small way. It normally takes a big committee several years of weekly meetings to design a program like this, and a compelling argument in defense of such a program would easily fill several hundred pages.</p>
<p>One thing I would look for is depth instead instead of breadth. So in a biology class that might mean spending several weeks on a topic like evolution, including a serious look at intelligent design and the way scientists have responded to it. A lab component might include the dissection of a vertebrate eye next to several different invertebrate eyes that are adapted to different kinds of environments. (Squid eyes are especially interesting in this regard.)</p>
<p>I think I’d like to see all college graduates come away with a serious understanding of statistics. Stats come up in the workplace and in civic life. If legislators are making policy based on a faulty understanding of some data, voters ought to be able to recognize that. It would be valuable for students to research the use of statistics in a contemporary issue and see who’s doing it right and who’s doing it wrong, with what consequences. They ought to write a paper based on their findings.</p>
<p>I’d like to see some discussion of values come up in any class that counts for humanities credit, and I’d like to see students challenged to apply that discussion to something real. An example: James Stockdale was a naval pilot who was shot down over Vietnam and held prisoner for nearly 8 years. He gave a very interesting speech, which he published separately, on the way his study of the stoic philosopher Epictetus helped him to survive that ordeal. At the very least, it’s an interesting essay to read in conjunction with one’s study of ancient philosophy. It would be made even more interesting if students wrote essays where they imagined themselves applying an ethical philosophy to events in their own lives. Most of us will never be tortured in prison. But eventually all of us will have to deal with an unplanned pregnancy, loss of a job, cancer, a parent with Alzheimer’s, and so on. If GE educates the “whole person,” then one thing it can do is give us, not a prescribed set of values, but the tools for creating, improving, and applying a set of values.</p>
<p>None of this is really original, it’s not complete, and I probably haven’t done it justice.</p>
<p>^ Thank you. What I’m seeing here is, a lot of people support some form of general education for everyone getting a 4-year degree but might disagree as to what exactly that base should be made of. </p>
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<p>Also, add the ability to understand and communicate about values that one does not necessarily share, and to understand that someone talking or writing about some values is not necessarily advocating those values.</p>
<p>1K views! Whoohoo!</p>
<p>Sounds like we could get into a whole discussion just on the values people should be taught. 
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<p>@albert69 What makes you think that GE requirements only go one way? Yes, humanities majors may only be required to take an intro math or science course, but STEM majors are often only required to take an intro humanities course. Taking a course in “music appreciation” is hardly the same as taking an </p>
<p>I missed those posts, baktrax. </p>
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<p>Where do STEM majors need to take “advanced history” (or similar) courses? At both of the top 100 large, public research Us I attended, the core requirements were basic math, bio and physical science, English, and some sort of social studies req. If anything, the STEM topics were far more heavily focused on in the core. </p>
<p>@albert69: “For one thing, the “well roundedness” only works one way. Engineering majors need to take arts classes, such as music appreciation and history, but history majors don’t need to take, say, physics and advanced math classes.”</p>
<p>Some places, perhaps—but every university I’ve been associated with as an instructor or as a student [dfbdfb counts on his fingers…eight!] requires engineering majors to take humanities classes and also requires humanities majors to take science classes. It’s not actually as unbalanced as you seem to think.</p>
<p>Oh—and it occurs to me that the answer to the OP’s question may well depend on the type of college you’re looking at. For Brown, the “new curriculum” is probably fine for the students—the sorts of students Brown gets, they’re likely to have a fairly broad base of cultural capital to work with. The place I work now (open access, basically a community college that “grew up”), not really so much—and so exposing the students here to a wide range of subjects through general education requirements is actually an incredibly useful and new experience for many if not most of them.</p>
<p>Okay, guys, thanks for the correction. I may have exaggerated the difference in the depth of gen ed courses between the majors. To me, the workload of even an “advanced” history, music appreciation, or philosophy class would probably not match that of an advanced math, science, or computer class, but I guess that would vary by the person. I admit that that is just supposition on my part. I just wanted to bring out some opinions on the subject. For me, going to college is to learn in depth about a particular passion I have, which happens to be technical in nature, not to learn a little of everything. I agree the points WasatchWriter has made though; the idea of general education is good, but the way it is currently being done may not be the best. </p>
<p>As for ethics - they already teach that in senior design classes for engineers to some extent. For me, my ethics would not necessarily be formed by any random college professor but rather my own belief in a higher power, but I suppose all you progressive thinkers will call me old fashioned for thinking that way. </p>
<p>I have a minor in bioethics. I have taken a lot of ethics classes in many different fields. Never once did I have a professor who tried to “form” my opinions. Rather, they simply challenged me to think critically about the broad implications of decisions/projects/etc. </p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with deriving your belief system from a higher power. Heck, it was the Catholic church which ultimately brought an end to forced sterilizations for Eugenic purposes (my field of study). What is wrong, IMO, is never having your beliefs challenged (whatever they are) and becoming a person with any level of power that doesn’t think about society-wide implications of what they’re doing. </p>
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<p>MIT’s humanities, arts, and social studies requirement (for all majors) requires a concentration of three courses (“subjects” in MIT jargon), at least one of which must be an advanced level course.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd’s humanities, social studies, and arts requirement requires a concentration of four courses. “The concentration represents progress in a field of study, and even though that field might be interdisciplinary, the concentration should typically advance beyond introductory-level courses.”</p>
<p>Berkeley’s College of Engineering requires at least two of the humanities and social studies courses be upper division (junior/senior level), and a series of at least two courses (at least one of which is upper division) in a single department, presumably in order to get students to go into some humanities or social studies subject in greater depth than one would by just taking intro-level courses.</p>
<p>This (or similar) upper division breadth requirement does not apply to science, humanities, social studies, or business majors, whose divisional general education requirements can all by fulfilled by lower division courses. The College of Letters and Science (where science, humanities, and social studies majors are) does require some upper division course work outside one’s major department, but it can be in closely related subjects (e.g. math majors taking upper division statistics courses, or comparative literature majors taking upper division English literature courses).</p>
<p>Ok, MIT and Harvey Mudd are very specific tech, private colleges.
Of course there are outliers. There always are. They are not the norm. </p>