Higher Education National Reports On The Undergraduate Curriculum

During the 1980s and 1990s critics and advocates of U.S. higher education issued numerous reports calling for reform of the college and university curriculum. These reports-from individuals, panels of experts assembled by federal agencies, educational lobbying organizations, and private foundations-responded to changes in postsecondary curricula implemented in the 1960s as the baby boom generation swelled college and university enrollments; and as the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, and Vietnam War protests led to demands for more relevant and student-centered curricula. As the era of economic prosperity that fueled the educational innovations of the 1960s ended, a number of social and political forces converged to produce a climate conducive to calls for reform of the undergraduate curriculum. Then the economic recession of the 1970s focused the attention of businesses, students, and parents on employment prospects for graduates and the marketability of a college degree. A downward trend in college admission test scores and related concerns about a decline in U.S. economic competitiveness resulted in calls for higher educational standards at elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels. At the same time, a Republican administration decentralized responsibility for educational expenditures in an effort to hold the states more accountable for educational improvements, and legislators committed to cost-effectiveness trimmed allocations to higher education. In 1983 concerns about the widespread public perception of problems in the U.S. educational system were the impetus for the widely read report, A Nation At Risk (1983), issued by the National Commission on Excellence in Education. In 1981 Terrel Bell, then U.S. Secretary of Education, directed the commission to examine the quality of education in the United States. Although the commission focused primarily on high school education, selective attention was also paid to higher education, elementary education, and vocational and technical programs. The commission’s findings regarding decreases in high school students’ preparation for college, declines in standardized college admission test scores and college selectivity, and general concerns about the quality of elementary and secondary education raised concerns about the impact of these problems on undergraduate education. Secretary Bell, and his successor, William Bennett, encouraged further scrutiny of college and university education and prompted calls for accountability at the postsecondary level. An Emphasis on Curricular Content The reports on higher education of the 1980s and 1990s often stressed the need to include specific courses or course content in postsecondary curricula, which had recently experienced a period of experimentation. Acceding to student demands for more choice of majors and elective courses, many colleges and universities in the 1960s and 1970s had relaxed requirements for the baccalaureate degree by reducing the number of required courses needed for graduation and permitting more elective courses-or by increasing the number and kinds of courses that would fulfill the requirements. Additional changes had occurred in major concentration programs, allowing students in many institutions to select from an array of courses to fulfill basic requirements or create majors based on their personal interests. Advances in knowledge and the creation of new disciplines, fields of study, and specializations also contributed significantly to changes in the college curriculum. Increased course options, increasing faculty commitment to advancing their disciplines, and growing departmental autonomy led to curricular fragmentation, while the combination of increased disciplinary specialization and student desire for degrees that would lead directly to employment created conditions conducive to the growth and diversification of postsecondary curricula. In 1984 the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), under the leadership of William Bennett, issued one of the first reports examining higher education. In To Reclaim a Legacy: A Report on the Humanities in Higher Education, Bennett, a former humanities professor, maintained that colleges and universities had lost a clear sense of the purpose of education. Defining the primary goal of education as learning about civilization and culture, he contended that students should study Western literature, history, and culture to obtain an understanding of the origins and development of their civilization and culture, as well as a sense of major trends in art, religion, politics, and society. Few college graduates, he argued, received adequate instruction in their own culture because faculty had succumbed to pressure for enrollments and to intellectual relativism, rather than assume “intellectual authority” for what students should learn (p. 20). Bennett also criticized faculty who taught the humanities in a “tendentious, ideological manner” that overtly valued or rejected particular social stances (p.16). According to advocates of the Western canon such as Bennett, the push for student choice and relevance in the curriculum had backfired, leaving U.S. democracy and society in disarray. Bennett believed that knowledge of Western civilization and culture should be fostered through careful reading of masterworks of English, American, and European literature. He also recommended that students become familiar with the history, literature, religion, and philosophy of at least one non-Western culture or civilization. Five years later, Bennett’s successor at NEH, Lynne Cheney, issued 50 Hours: A Core Curriculum for College Students. Arguing, as did Bennett, that a common core curriculum was essential to a coherent education, Cheney proposed a required curriculum that stressed the study of Western civilization, but also included the study of additional civilizations, foreign languages, science, mathematics, and social sciences. writing service

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