If faculty won’t fix the curricula, trustees and administrators must
Florida administrators are revising general education in universities and colleges. Perverse incentives have diluted and politicized general-education courses at the expense of foundational knowledge. Since universities will not fix themselves, state administrators must safeguard educational vision where faculty and university administrators will not.
How did we get here? Most college curriculum was prescribed in the 1800s. Harvard under legendary president Charles William Eliot swung the pendulum toward a totally elective college experience in the late 1800s. Under a strict elective system, students could make their way through Harvard guided only by their own choices. Schools stampeded to the elective system. The quality of education suffered, however, because a grasp of the Western heritage simply fell by the wayside, and students were ill prepared for higher-level classes.
Perverse incentives have diluted and politicized general-education courses at the expense of foundational knowledge.Today’s system of major concentration, general-education distribution, and electives was born from these swings of the pendulum. Yale adopted it in 1901. Cornell in 1905. Even Harvard abandoned its elective system for the major/general-education approach in 1910.
