WE HAVE WORK TO DO. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni rates Northern Illinois University's general education requirements as failing. Composition is required; by the standards the Council uses, the university's mathematics and science requirements, while present, are not sufficient.

In my hitches as professor of record in the Capstone class (I explain this to curious majors as an attempt to do on the cheap what a New England private college would call a senior honors thesis) I have wished for the opportunity to time-slip the English Department, a wish that others have shared.

I've seen some Facebook conversations to the effect that the absence of serious general education requirements is no big deal: what matters is career development in the major. David French rebuts that proposition.

After all, IT managers belong to the same republic as poets, and it’s worthwhile for both parties to have gained a common set of critical-thinking skills and to participate in our civil society with at least a core knowledge about our history and culture. We’re all voters — at the very least — and we have a responsibility to cast that vote intelligently, in a way that considers not just perceived short-term gain but also long-term political and cultural trends.

I fear, however, that the drive to return to a core curriculum may meet an unconquerable foe in the “college for everybody” movement. As colleges reach out to the great mass of Americans, they do so as essentially glorified vocational schools, the place where you go to get a good job. A college education becomes a bullet point on a resume and not an end in itself. And as the costs skyrocket, students chafe at spending thousands of dollars on courses that simply don’t fit within their plan.

He suggests that a core curriculum offers economies of standardization, thus turning what he sees as the necessity of cost-cutting midwiving the virtue of a core. I participated in some efforts to link general education courses thematically -- the dean framed it as a way to build freshman and sophomore enrollment that combined a distinctive presentation of courses with an appeal to self-interest (the more vocational degrees being slightly more effective at landing entry-level jobs; the promotions to corporate level being more likely to go to liberal arts majors) -- while not cutting into the cafeteria menu of distribution requirements, something that might not appeal to colleagues who advocate a multiplicity of narrowly focused courses.

The focus on vocational credentials turns the less-highly regarded universities into replicators of social stratification, according to K. C. Johnson. [Hyperlinks added by the Superintendent.]

Is the AAC&U really suggesting that colleges and universities should orient their universities around what they're "hearing" from "employers"? What of the ideal of a liberal education? Or the obligation of public colleges and universities to train future citizens capable of participating in the nation's civic life?

Apparently a vocational education is acceptable for the kind of non-Ivy League students that the AAC&U targets. I also suspect that these unnamed "employers" that have criticized ACTA's approach to [the Association's] Debra Humphreys are also telling the AAC&U that colleges and universities should reorient their curricula to focus exclusively on "diversity."

Access-assessment-remediation-retention. Keeping the Poor Poor.