The Cheated Undergraduate

by Stanley N. Katz, director of the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies

In his article, Stanley Katz cites the latest in a series of reports (AAC&U's Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College) to conclude that colleges and universities are succeeding at giving students practical, pre-professional training but are failing to deliver the basic tenets of a liberal education: training students to make value judgments, think creatively, or learn across a breadth of disciplines. Katz cites perennial concerns: that faculty are “chosen, compensated and promoted primarily for their promise as researchers, not teachers” and that ”[g]eneral or liberal education is a casualty of [the] trend toward educational utilitarianism” that has been cultivated in today's knowledge-based society.

One solution the author suggests to improve students' learning is to loosen the hold of academic disciplines, thereby bringing back the brand of general education tested with critical analysis common in universities in the mid-twentieth century. He recommends reversing the more recent “major” trend that forces specialization too early. Another fix would simply be to “do better to challenge undergraduates to ask their most urgent questions about themselves, the world, and the human condition—and to organize their curriculum around those questions.” Many colleges and universities have moved in this direction—places where students design their own majors, for instance—but “[i]t will require a lot of faculty and student effort to determine where the fine line between chaos and creative opportunity lies,” says Katz.

Faculty work loads need to become more flexible, he writes, and students will require more individually tailored advising as opposed to lectures and examinations. Student research should become the primary way undergraduates learn, Katz believes, as he pictures a university as a library with “learned pedagogues” as librarians who guide students to their own discovery of knowledge as part of a truly liberal education.

To view the entire article, visit www.wws.princeton.edu/%7Esnkatz/papers/CheatedUndergrad.html.

For Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College, visit www.greaterexpectations.org.

The Living Arts: Comparative and Historical Reflections on Liberal Education by Sheldon Rothblatt (the latest in AAC&U's Academy in Transition series) examines the evolution of liberal arts both in this country and around the world and proposes ways of reinvigorating liberal education at our colleges and universities. For more information, visit www.aacu.org/publications/index.cfm.

The articles featured in AAC&U Perspectives do not necessarily represent the views of AAC&U staff, its board of directors, or its membership.