InsideHigherEd, here.
Duke University was trying to do something different with a proposed new undergraduate curriculum, emphasizing less what students should study than how. But the plan was perhaps a little too different, and it’s been tabled until the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences faculty can reach a greater degree of consensus. …
GenEd of course is in bad need of reform, but I don’t think any institution is actually willing to commit to this because it wall cause temporary re-adjustments.
GenEd remains the higher ed legacy of post WW II and it doesn’t really even matter if most agree that is not very useful – it will persist and we will keep wasting faculty time (and nttf time) teaching largely useless courses.
dog, are you insinuating that nttf are not faculty? Your comment about “wasting faculty time (and nttf time)” with “nttf” in parentheses sends a message. Why not just faculty?
Also, what are the long-term costs of not committing to change and creating short-term, temporary adjustments?
dog’s don’t insinuate – we don’t even know what that means.
How about – waste teaching time (I don’t care who teaches these useless courses)
How do I know what the long term costs of anything are; dogs know nothing about the long term, the only thing we care about is to where to dig next …
I will venture some heresy here and risk being burned at the stake.
The European “Matura”, “baccalauréat”, the “Abitur”, the “A-Level” have all offered the equivalent of what we consider to be gen ed in the first years of university.
Alas, American secondary schools rarely provide such a program and such an exam.
I do realize many will consider the process and the exams to be stultifying, but if done well they do allow universities to offer more coherent programs for their students.
I am not optimistic that such a program will resonate well with many in the educations establishment but as someone who has seen the results of the various systems, I do believe that this solution has much to recommend it.