GENERAL EDUCATION IN AN AGE
OF STUDENT MOBILITY
Foreword by Carol Geary Schneider
What is an educated person? What should educated people know and
be able to do when they graduate from college? Over the last twenty
years, these distinctively American questions have been addressed
in the context of “general education reviews” by virtually
every college and university faculty in the United States. And while
every campus has its own unique history and mission, there has begun
to emerge a discernible national consensus about what really matters
in college learning. There is growing agreement that educated people,
whatever their choice of major, need grounding in the broad domains
of knowledge—sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities—and
should also possess:
• a number of core proficiencies, in areas such as writing,
quantitative reasoning,
logical analysis, and the use of computers;
• the ability to search out, evaluate, and integrate knowledge
from many sources and contexts;
• historical and contemporary knowledge of their own and other
cultures, the nature of global interdependence, and the societal
influences of technological change;
• ethical judgment, grounded values, and a well-developed sense
of responsibility;
• and a demonstrated capacity to turn knowledge into good practice
(in the work
place, the civic arena, and private life).
Ironically, however, even as individual campuses have clarified
the purposes of their general education programs, higher education
has seen a tremendous rise in student mobility. Today, the typical
American student is one who attends two, three, or even more campuses,
pursuing a degree over an extended and interrupted period of time.
Thus, even as individual colleges and universities work to make
their own general education programs more coherent, fewer and fewer
students proceed through those programs according to plan. Rather,
they take courses here and there, cobbling together bits and pieces
of more than one curriculum. As students frequently tell us, their
general education programs add up not to an intellectual framework
but, rather, to an assortment of fragments, to be assembled up and
then left behind as quickly as possible.
How do we close the gap between the purpose of general education
programs and the absence of purpose that students often experience
when they take general education courses? That question is the focus
of this publication.
AAC&U is currently engaged in a major initiative to articulate
and promote “Greater Expectations” for student learning.
Drawing from the educational goals and innovative curricular models
developed at twenty-two “leadership institutions” (including
both two-year and four-year schools, selected through a competitive
national search), this project will identify and publicize practices
that effectively lead to the sorts of high school and college outcomes
that the 21st century demands.
One part of this initiative, Building Greater Expectations for General
Education and Student Transfer, addresses precisely the challenges
described in these pages. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education's
Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, this project
follows up on pioneering efforts in several states to clarify and
coordinate inter-institutional general education goals and practices.
The next step will be to assist many more states in creating general
education programs that ensure both ease of transfer and intellectual
coherence.
This project, I should add, will not attempt to develop common
course content in general education—our goals can and should
be achieved through many different kinds of content. But AAC&U
does believe that we need new efforts—connecting both two-
and four-year campuses—to focus on what students are actually
expected to do in courses meant to achieve general education outcomes.
We'd like to ask, for example, what levels of accomplishment
should be attempted and achieved by our students? What kinds of
assessments reinforce rather than trivialize students' achievements?
How might we help our highly mobile student populations to experience
a coherent and purposeful course of study?
We hope you will use General Education in an Age of Student Mobility
to stimulate discussion of these and other important questions about
systemic change in general education. As a society, we have long
debated our aspirations for student learning. It's time now
to focus on creating shared practices, across different kinds of
campuses, in order to meet our students' needs and to honor
our own educational principles.
Carol Geary Schneider
President, Association of American Colleges and Universities
January 2001
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