The Academy and General Education.

Overview & Synopsis

Higher education is coping with increasing pressures for change, and one of the prime targets for change has been the college curriculum, particularly general education. This paper reviews (1) some of the books written on general education; (2) the difficulties that general education is experiencing because of its stagnation in the face of major social changes; (3) the factors likely to affect the future course of general education, which include the expansion of the proportion of youth attending college, the changing characteristics of these students and of faculty, the increasingly pluralistic mission of colleges and universities, the growing emphasis on disciplines rather than liberal arts as instruments of human development, the growing power of the individual departments, and the decreasing consensus on the means and ends in higher education; (4) those areas that have not changed, such as the undergraduate curriculum, and techniques of college instruction; (5) three periods in the twentieth century evolution of higher education curricula; and (6) some undesirable and some essential qualities of the general education programs of the future. A selected annotated bibliography on general education concludes the report. (AF)