Curriculum Matters
Employers have complained for years that four-year college graduates are not prepared for the challenge of their jobs. Now we know why.
As New York University’s Richard Arum and University of Virginia’s Josipa Roksa vividly describe in their recent book, “Academically Adrift,” 36% of the graduates of four-year institutions showed little if any evidence of increased capacity for critical thinking and analytical reasoning, the skills essential for career success. It’s as if they never went to college.
After tracking a cohort of 2,300 students who started college in fall 2005 and graduated in spring 2009, the researchers report that 36% have moved back home with their parents, with almost one in ten carrying over $60,000 in debt.
It gets worse: Two-thirds earn less than $35,000 and 45% earn less than $15,000, meaning that employed graduates with higher incomes are the ones who grew intellectually in college. The case for a solid core curriculum with the skills students need for career success, like economic understanding, effective writing, and an understanding of the institutions of government, is compelling.
Let’s look at some of William & Mary’s current General Education Requirements (GER) and see how they hold up. The college does not require an old-fashioned composition course that ensures the mechanics of good writing –– coherent structure, spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Students can fulfill the first composition requirement (there are two, and they are listed apart from the GERs) with a freshman level course in any area –– such as dance or film or watercolors — and the second with an advanced course in any department, which means content is king and writing mechanics are rarely addressed.
W&M does not require a survey of literature, considered important for critical reading abilities and an understanding of the depth and diversity of human thought. Students can fulfill the “literature and history of the arts” GER with a course that “introduces them to two methods of analysis” in the arts, such as dance or film or watercolors.
How many of our graduates go forth into the world never understanding a reference to spoils and stratagems, dependence upon the kindness of strangers, the nine circles of hell, or having the best of all possible worlds? How many can critique a piece of writing for bias, tone or fallacies?
W&M does not require a course in the fundamentals of American history and institutions that provides the road map for effective participation in our free society. Can the graduates describe how the Constitution has evolved and what the two major views of the Constitution are? (Hint: One is liberal, one is conservative, and they are equally relevant in any discussion of the Constitution.)
Our college does not require a basic course in economics, increasingly crucial for success in career and civic participation. Supply and demand, cost benefit analysis, sunk costs, and the ever-popular concepts of debt and prosperity. Can our graduates speak rationally on these topics? Can they explain how socialism has been proven to halt prosperity?
These courses are available, but that is not enough. In reviewing college course catalogs originating in the early 1800s (available in Swem’s Special Collections), I found that the General Education Requirements at W&M plunged into wishy-washiness about 20 years ago. The W&M administration recognizes that some things should be required, as demonstrated by the very existence of GERs, and has agreed to an open discussion of the General Education Requirements beginning with a lecture by Michael B. Poliakoff, policy director for the American Council of Trustees & Alumni, this Saturday in the Wren Building.
Things without all remedy should be without regard. There is remedy here to be had. Saturday's lecture is the start of something big at the college, and it may very well turn into the be-all and end-all — because curriculum matters.
Karla Kraynak Bruno, a 1981 graduate of the college and longtime James City County resident, lives, reads and writes in Arlington.
More –– The Poliakoff lecture will take place this Saturday, April 16, at 4 p.m. in the first floor historic classroom of the Wren Building. It’s free and open to the public.