Post by Dave on Nov 21, 2010 7:12:55 GMT -5
College ratings ignites debate over core requirements
By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 20, 2010; 8:51 PM
BALTIMORE - Johns Hopkins University is America's premier research institution. Yet a student could complete a bachelor's degree here without ever taking a course in science. Or math. Or history. Or English.
Students at Johns Hopkins - and many other prestigious colleges - choose classes the way a diner patron assembles a meal, selecting items from a vast menu. Broad distribution requirements ensure that students explore the academic universe outside their majors. But no one is required to study any particular field, let alone take a specific course. Shakespeare, Plato, Euclid - all are on the menu; none is required.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a Washington-based advocacy group, handed out F grades in August to Hopkins and many of its peers, inviting debate on a basic question: What, if anything, should America's college students be required to learn?
The group faulted the schools, including Yale, Brown, Cornell, Amherst and the University of California at Berkeley, for failing to require students to take courses in more than one of seven core academic subjects: math, science, history, economics, foreign language, literature and composition.
"At Stanford, you can fulfill the American cultures requirement by taking a class on a Japanese drum," said Anne Neal, president of the trustees group.
"We're certainly not saying that Harvard or Hopkins or Yale are not good schools, or that their graduates are not smart kids," said Neal, who attended Harvard and Harvard Law. "What we're saying is that those schools don't do a good job at providing their students with a coherent core."
CONTINUED AT:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/19/AR2010111907408.html
