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Peer Review, Summer 2003
Reality Check
Keeping General Education Vital A Struggle Against
Original Sin?
By Jerry G. Gaff, senior scholar, Association
of American Colleges and Universities
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During one of my recent campus visits, a senior faculty member
offered an intriguing metaphor for efforts to revitalize general
education. "Are you the same person who wrote about experimental
colleges in the late 1960s and 70s?" he asked. I affirmed
that I was indeed the same one, and expressed surprise that
he had read my work, remembered my name, and connected it
with his university's current work on curriculum reform. He
thought for a minute before observing that it wasn't really
educational "reform" that I had been pursuing during my career.
Rather, he suggested, the work is more like a struggle against
"original sin." It involves trying to overcome academic pride,
he said, the tendency of faculty to focus on their own discipline,
research interests, and individual autonomy rather than on
the most fundamental knowledge and skills their students need
from a curriculum.
Of course, the pendulum is a more common metaphor; attention
to the core curriculum is said to come and go. Yet it is curious
that the emphasis on general education continues today, a
quarter of a century after the most recent revival, begun
when, in the late 1970s, the Carnegie Council on Higher Education
declared general education a "disaster area."
In a survey conducted in 2000,* my colleagues and I found
that 57 percent of four-year institutions--including
a majority of all Carnegie types--were conducting a formal
review of general education. Further, 64 percent of chief
academic officers reported that, as an institutional priority,
attention to general education had increased; only 2 percent
reported a decrease, and 33 percent reported no change. If
attention to general education used to be episodic, my sense
is that it has become a sustained concern at most institutions.
Why Has the Attempt to Improve General Education
Become a Constant Concern?
There are several reasons. First, when a faculty decides
on what learning is most important for all students, it usually
identifies a configuration of educational goals so important
that they cannot easily be ignored or neglected.
Second, many institutions that have revised their curricula
have also created new governance arrangements that provide
ongoing leadership for general education. These often include
a dean or director of general education; directors of writing,
freshman seminars, and other components; and an institution-wide
committee for general education. Individuals specifically
assigned to provide leadership for general education have
a responsibility to keep it vital.
A third reason is that there are always some unfinished agendas
in improving general education programs. For example, our
survey found that 73 percent of the chief academic officers
said their program had clear goals either very much or quite
a lot. The same response was given by 62 percent when asked
whether their curricular requirements were directly linked
to the goals; 38 percent reported that their program had a
coherent sequence of courses, and 32 percent said they assess
student learning in relation to the goals. Clearly assessment,
forging coherence, and connecting the curriculum to goals
are all ongoing challenges--even if a faculty agrees
on common learning goals.
Finally, to paraphrase a dictum in AAC&U's classic
Integrity of the College Curriculum, it is a constant challenge
for the faculty as a whole to take responsibility for the
curriculum as a whole. Engaging faculty understanding of,
and support for, general education is an unending task.
As with overcoming original sin, it may be impossible to
permanently achieve a student-centered and learning-centered
general education program. But it is, nonetheless, essential
to answer persistent student questions: "Why do we need
general education?" and "Why do I have to take
this course?" As long as a broad general education is
valued as both preparation for a good life and for professional
success (see the forthcoming report from AAC&U's
Project on Accreditation and Assessment), the effort to make
that happen is not likely to go away. Better to join the ongoing
struggle than to wait for the pendulum to swing back again.
* Ratcliff, James L., D. Kent Johnson, Steven M. La Nasa,
and Jerry G. Gaff. 2001. The
status of general education in the year 2000: Summary of a
national survey. Washington, DC: Association of American
Colleges and Universities.
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