Download a transcript of the podcast HERE.
Note: Please check any quotations against the audio recording. The views expressed by guests on this podcast are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of ACTA.

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Seven colleges received a perfect score for their core curriculum, according to a higher education reform group.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni added an “A+” score to its “What Will They Learn” grades for the first time in the nearly 30-year history of its report card. Of the seven colleges, four are Catholic, one is Orthodox Christian, one is Protestant, and another is a public university in Virginia.

Those seven schools are: “Christopher Newport University, Patrick Henry College, Thomas Aquinas College in California, Thomas Aquinas College in Massachusetts, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, the University of Dallas, and the University of Saint Katherine,” according to the latest rating.

Patrick Henry College is Protestant, while the University of Saint Katherine is Orthodox.

The group’s vice president of policy commented on why Catholic and Protestant schools were most of the highly rated colleges.

“There are likely two reasons that Catholic and Christian schools receive high What Will They Learn? grades,” Bradley Jackson told The College Fix via a media statement.

“Liberal arts education has long been a hallmark of Catholic and Christian education in the United States and abroad, and the What Will They Learn? system evaluates universities on their requirements in the liberal arts,” Jackson stated. “We also find that institutions with a clear sense of mission, which religious institutions often have, perform quite well in our rating system.”

ACTA grades colleges on “seven essential subject areas” which are, according to Jackson, “Composition, Literature, intermediate-level Foreign Language, U.S. Government or History, Economics, Mathematics, and Natural Science. ‘A+’ institutions require all B.A. and B.S.-seeking students to take all seven of these subject areas at the college level.”

Public institutions, on the whole, perform better than private colleges, according to Jackson.

He said 35 percent of public universities “receive grades of ‘B’ or higher,” whereas only 27 percent of private universities do.

“Although only one of our ‘A+’ schools is public, we find that many public schools reviewed do prioritize robust liberal arts requirements for undergraduate students,” Jackson stated.

Christopher Newport University in Virginia is one of the public schools that prioritizes the liberal arts.

It deferred to a news release when asked by The Fix for further comment.

“Christopher Newport’s innovative core curriculum and rigorous academic standards have once again earned the highest grade possible,” the university stated in a news release.

“Christopher Newport’s Liberal Learning Core Curriculum comprises a minimum of 40 semester hours of coursework, and includes Liberal Learning Foundations and Areas of Inquiry,” the university stated. “This comprehensive program of study develops students’ capacities of empowerment, knowledge and responsibility.”

Thomas Aquinas College, which received an A+ for both its California and Massachusetts campuses, said the grade is “a much-appreciated acknowledgment of the depth and rigor of the College’s program of Catholic liberal education.”

Spokesman Chris Weinkopf told The Fix the school is “grateful for this recognition of the hard work that our faculty and students joyfully undertake, inspired by their shared love for learning and the truth.”

Editor’s note: The article has been updated to clarify the University of Saint Katherine is Orthodox, not Catholic.

This post appeared on The College Fix on May 29, 2024.

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Oases of Excellence are outstanding programs at colleges and universities across the country that are dedicated to educating students for informed citizenship in a free society by maintaining the highest academic standards, introducing students to the best of the foundational arts and sciences, teaching American heritage, and ensuring free inquiry into a range of intellectual viewpoints. ACTA’s Oases of Excellence network includes over 90 programs at a wide range of institutions. The network is a forum for sharing ideas and best practices for running an independent liberal arts program and serves as a valuable resource for donors who are committed to supporting academic excellence.  

The mission of the American Foundations minor is to deepen cadets’ understanding of the Constitution in alignment with West Point’s overall mission of forming leaders of character ready to serve the Army and the nation. The minor’s courses, guest speaker program, and academic enrichment experiences create an interdisciplinary community of cadets and faculty dedicated to understanding America’s Founding principles. Hugh Liebert, co-director of the minor, remarked, “We are honored to receive ACTA’s recognition as an Oasis of Excellence.”  

ASU’s Center for American Institutions is an interdisciplinary academic program dedicated to “preserving and renewing our fundamental American institutions to maintain well-ordered liberty.” The center undertakes research projects to examine the “state and health of American institutions”; offers courses centered on maintaining a constitutional republic; and holds regular lectures for the campus community and the greater Phoenix area. Professor Donald Critchlow, director of the center, stated, “ACTA’s recognition of CAI’s mission by honoring the center as an Oasis of Excellence is humbling, especially to be among the other Oases who are equally committed to restoring the promise of higher education. Dr. Michael Poliakoff and his fine team at ACTA should be commended for their pursuit of academic excellence, freedom, and accountability.”  

Oases of Excellence and the faculty who lead them are restoring the legacy of higher education, one student at a time. ACTA President Michael Poliakoff remarked, “A strong liberal arts education has become all too rare at a time when students need it the most. These centers’ efforts to prepare students for an informed and engaged life of the mind are vital for the strength of our civil society and the health of our nation.”  
   
A complete list of ACTA’s Oases of Excellence can be found here. 

MEDIA CONTACT: Gabrielle Anglin
EMAIL: ganglin@goacta.org

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With the guidance of our Council of Scholars, ACTA has identified seven subject areas that together make up a foundational core curriculum in the liberal arts. What Will They Learn?® evaluates curricular and general educational requirements at over 1,100 U.S. colleges and universities, rating each institution’s curriculum on an “A+”–“F” scale based on whether they require students to study these essential subject areas.  

The seven subject areas are Composition, Literature, (intermediate-level) Foreign Language, U.S. Government or History, Economics, Mathematics, and Natural Science. What Will They Learn?®’s new “A+” grade identifies liberal arts institutions that require students to take courses in all seven subject areas. Out of 1,134 universities reviewed by What Will They Learn?®, only seven universities earn an “A+”. 

These seven institutions are Christopher Newport University, Patrick Henry College, Thomas Aquinas College in California, Thomas Aquinas College in Massachusetts, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, the University of Dallas, and the University of Saint Katherine. Each of these universities stands out for its rigorous curriculum and commitment to liberal arts education. 

Our “A+” schools are models of educational quality and pedagogical integrity. These institutions deserve the consideration of academically serious students and should serve as inspiration to educators seeking to make students’ college years some of the most rewarding and transformative years of their lives.

MEDIA CONTACT: Gabrielle Anglin
EMAIL: ganglin@goacta.org

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It’s not. And as tuition and fees rise, some students would likely benefit from a bachelor’s degree that could be completed more quickly, potentially in three years.

The New England Commission of Higher Education had been among the last of the national accrediting agencies to refuse to consider accrediting a bachelor’s degree program with fewer than 120 credits. That changed Wednesday when the commission announced that for the first time it would consider proposals for programs that allow students to earn a bachelor’s degree with fewer than 120 credits.

“The impetus is to find a way to reduce college costs and get people out into the market sooner,” commission president Lawrence Schall said.

The announcement is an important positive step that should encourage the rise of innovative programs that let students obtain a degree more quickly and cheaply. It will not be right for every school, major, or student, but colleges should think seriously about whether a shorter degree program would appeal to some of their students. As schools begin to implement these programs, the data that emerge could provide valuable insights into how to make college more efficient without compromising quality.

Some schools already offer three-year degrees, but they still require 120 credits. Students either get credits for Advanced Placement tests or early college programs or they take classes year-round. But in the last few years, a national initiative spearheaded by Robert Zemsky, a retired University of Pennsylvania professor, and Lori Carrell, chancellor of the University of Minnesota Rochester, has gotten about 20 schools to commit to piloting a three-year bachelor’s degree with fewer than 120 credits.

The two New England schools that have expressed interest are Merrimack College in North Andover and New England College.

New England College is exploring a 100-credit degree in criminal justice. The program cuts some electives and combines general education and criminal justice classes, for example, by letting students fulfill a science requirement by taking forensic science. Lesperance said he thinks the program will attract students who are not interested in the full college experience of sports and extracurriculars but who want a credential for a job — for example, police officers who would get paid more with a college degree.

Merrimack College officials have said, in a presentation to NECHE, that they are envisioning a pilot program with a small number of students in a handful of non-licensure majors like business, health science, physics, and liberal arts. It would target lower-income, high-ability students who plan to pursue a graduate degree.

A handful of schools elsewhere — including Brigham Young University-Idaho and its affiliated Ensign College, University of Minnesota campuses in Morris and Rochester, and West Virginia-based American Public University System — have had similar programs approved under different accrediting bodies. But New England schools have been stymied until now by NECHE’s unwillingness to approve these programs.

NECHE’s new guidelines say any program must be at least 90 credits with classes in a major, general education classes, and electives. It needs to have a degree name that distinguishes it from a typical bachelor’s degree, and the school must be transparent in marketing materials that some graduate schools or employers might not consider it a bachelor’s. The school needs to assess program outcomes related to student retention, graduation rates, learning, and employment.

Offering a lower-cost, shorter degree could increase chances of student success. Over the years, college tuition and fees have steadily risen, and many graduates leave school with enormous student loan debt. Around one-quarter of first-time bachelor’s degree students and 40 percent of all undergraduate students drop out before obtaining a degree, according to the Education Data Initiative, often for financial reasons.

Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonprofit focused on improving educational quality, suggested that colleges could cut electives, revise core curriculums, and still offer a quality education. “A well designed 90-credit-hour program could get students ready for work and citizenship without the financial and opportunity costs,” Poliakoff said. “For accreditors to dig their heels in and say only a 120-hour program will be sufficient is simply ignoring reality.”

There are existing tests that measure how colleges are performing and whether students are learning, which could be used to assess how much students are learning from a shortened bachelor’s program compared to a traditional degree. As Michael Horn, an education writer and lecturer at Harvard who cofounded the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, said, “I’d much rather be certifying demonstrations of learning as opposed to focusing on is it three years or is it four years.”

It’s an attitude accreditors and schools should adopt. Ensuring students are learning well is more important than regulating how long it takes them to learn.

This article appeared in The Boston Globe on March 6, 2024.

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But many people also seem to implicitly or explicitly understand that higher education is not always delivering on its core mission of, well … higher education. Put another way, we are seeing a growing realization that while people who graduate from even the best universities might be well-schooled, many are not well-educated. And this could have dire implications, not just for individual students, but for the entire country.

A few decades ago, I began to notice that many of the recently minted college graduates I was working with had surprisingly wide gaps in essential cultural and historical knowledge. Casual conversations revealed no idea who Dante was, what William the Conqueror conquered or what happened at the Appomattox Courthouse, to cite just a few real examples. What made these revelations so surprising and even paradoxical was that these folks were generally very smart and had attended some of America’s best universities. I have encountered this phenomenon so often since then that I’m no longer surprised when it occurs.

This is troubling on a number of levels, starting with the well-worn but valid notion that good citizenship and by extension democratic self-government hinge upon our population having an understanding of our common culture and history and the governing institutions that grew out of them. As Winston Churchill said, “A nation that forgets its past has no future.”

But most of us no longer know much about our past. Even though more Americans are going to college than ever before, another recent survey showed that only 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. would pass a basic citizenship test. And as we’ve seen in recent weeks on campuses around the country, a knowledge vacuum can easily be filled with dangerous ideas.

More importantly, millions of students are being denied what is quite possibly the greatest gift our society can bestow upon them: an education that opens the door to the life of the mind — one of continued and enriching learning, productive self-examination and curiosity about our world. Of course, building such a life requires more than knowledge. Developing critical thinking skills and a love of learning are also important. But without a solid foundation of real historical, scientific and cultural knowledge, such a life is simply not possible.

That’s because context is vitally important to good thinking. You may be excellent at connecting dots, but that won’t help you if there are few dots to connect. And you can’t outsource this; Google is not a substitute for real erudition.

Of course, the higher education establishment is not entirely to blame for our ignorance pandemic. Primary and secondary schools are also failing students in this regard. But, in the past, college was where many people began building and deploying the intellectual capital that would carry them for the rest of their lives.

While I had a mother who encouraged me to read and a number of excellent high school teachers, it was at university that I discovered the late quartets of Beethoven, the frescoes of Masaccio, “Citizen Kane” and the novels of Dostoyevsky. University was where I first read the Federalist Papers, the dialogues of Plato and the great historians, from Thucydides to Liddel Hart. 

Perhaps most importantly, it was at college that these and countless other touchstones of learning began to shift from individual points of light into constellations of understanding.

That was 40 years ago, when it was still common for students (particularly in the liberal arts) to spend much if not most of their first two years on campus working their way through a required core curriculum that focused on ensuring graduates were exposed to the great ideas, the great art and the great story of our country and the civilization upon which it is based. But even then, some colleges, particularly elite institutions, were already dismantling these essential core requirements. Today, according to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, most colleges don’t require students to take any history or literature courses. That needs to change.

The higher education establishment has to once again provide students with a grounding in history and the arts and sciences. That means restoring a rigorous liberal arts curriculum and requiring all who graduate to complete it. 

As one professor told me long ago, “My job is to instill in you love of learning and provide you with a scaffolding of knowledge to help you get started.” That should be every college’s creed and mission.

This piece appeared on The Hill on November, 8, 2023.

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“In his long and distinguished career as a scholar, teacher, humanist, and citizen of the academy, Professor Kors has exemplified the values and virtues on which true education rests,” said ACTA President Michael Poliakoff. “It is not accidental that the editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment would also be the most consequential figure of our generation in the struggle to protect campus freedom of expression. He breathes the very spirit of the Enlightenment: an open mind, a commitment to human freedom, and a devotion to intellectual rigor. He has been a storied mentor to the students fortunate to be in his classroom and also to those beyond who have been inspired by his writing and his public lectures. ACTA is privileged to present to Alan Charles Kors the Philip Merrill Award.”

Dr. Kors joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, where he now holds the post of Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of European History. He served as editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment and has written several books and many articles on early modern French intellectual history. He served for six years on the National Council for the Humanities and has received fellowships from the American Council for Learned Societies, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, and the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University. In 2005, President George W. Bush awarded the National Humanities Medal to Dr. Kors for his dedication to the study of the humanities and the defense of academic freedom. Three years after accepting the National Humanities Medal, Dr. Kors also received the prestigious Bradley Prize. In 1999, Dr. Kors cofounded FIRE with Harvey Silverglate and later served as its pro bono codirector, president, and chairman.

Dr. Kors will accept the award and deliver remarks at ACTA’s Philip Merrill Award Gala on October 27, 2023, in Washington, DC. Tribute speakers will include Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University; C. Bradley Thompson, professor of political science at Clemson University and executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism; and American historian Allen C. Guelzo, who serves as senior research scholar in the Council of the Humanities and director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University.

To see a full list of ACTA’s former Merrill Award winners, click here.

MEDIA CONTACT: Gabrielle Anglin
EMAIL: ganglin@goacta.org

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There are many issues that need to be addressed, including the cost of education and the rampant controversies related to campus free speech and intellectual diversity. One issue that is not discussed enough, however, is curriculum: What do students learn at college?

We hear more these days about how students are being “prepared for the workforce” or “provided the tools to become successful adults” than we ever do about what they actually learn, and this is because many institutions have replaced strong educational standards with vague ideas about professional culture and teamwork. It has come to seem as though some colleges do not care what their students learn at all, so long as they get practice at taking direction, turning in assignments on time, and working collaboratively.

Surely, these are all important skills, but are they worth the $36,000 average yearly cost of attending college in the United States? Is it any wonder that, according to data from New America, 44% of Generation Z believe , incorrectly, that one can “ensure financial security” with only a high school diploma or equivalent? After all, what does one really learn in college anyway?

It was not always this way. College has always been understood to be a challenge, but the difficulties have not always included crushing debt and uncertain value. Instead, the challenge used to be primarily intellectual. You went to college to learn things that are simply too advanced to teach in high school, too abstract or too concrete, too heady, too mature. Importantly, you learned things that other highly educated people also knew, creating a “high culture” of meaningful, shared ideas to discuss and debate. You read Plato, Milton, or Mill to interrogate the relationship between freedom and obedience. You studied calculus to learn how science understands change and continuity; you studied history to see these things in a different way.

Students still learn things on college campuses, of course, but too often, they are allowed to graduate having learned very little of lasting importance. They have taken a set of classes on specialized topics, but they have no way to connect these ideas together. They take courses that relate to their preexisting interests and identities rather than those designed to broaden their horizons and challenge their preconceptions. Thus, when they leave school, often in tremendous debt, they have aged, but often they have not grown. They have learned how to finish a set of complex tasks, but they have not learned how to think. They have information, but they do not even have a road map to wisdom. Especially in our hyperpolarized era, in which people increasingly see those on the other side of political and cultural issues as enemies, it is vital for colleges to model civil discourse, respectful debate, and positive civic engagement. Colleges around the country are beginning to include these ideas in their freshman orientation sessions, and this is an encouraging development.

Colleges could and should be offering more to their students in terms of education, and they should be expecting more of them, too. Returning to strong core curricula, which give students a strong sense of accomplishment and bring them together around shared ideas and concerns, would be an excellent way for higher education to win back the confidence of the public.

At least then it would be clear why you should attend college: to learn.

This article was originally published by the Washington Examiner on September 27, 2023.

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Overspecialization within higher education poses similar problems. Most students choose a major their freshman year and then dive immediately into degree-specific courses. At the same time, institutions are throwing out the “outdated” liberal arts core curriculum in favor of general education courses oriented toward individual majors. At first glance, this seems reasonable. Colleges and universities want to make sure that students are as educated as possible in their field of study before graduation. However, students’ career prospects will also be harmed if they do not receive basic training in the liberal arts and sciences. Research has shown that studying these essential subjects develops important abilities that employers prize, like communication and critical thinking skills. Without these skills, they will not be attractive job candidates, even if they have taken every course in their selected degree.

Interdisciplinary study enhances students’ competency in their chosen specialization by helping them understand how their major relates to other disciplines, apply their specialized knowledge in different contexts, and effectively communicate what they know. This style of education goes back to the earliest universities. In 1828, Yale University published its Report on a Course of Liberal Education, which defines the general subject areas that all students should explore and the important skills these subjects cultivate:

From pure mathematics, [the student] learns the art of demonstrative reasoning. In attending to the physical sciences, he becomes familiar with facts . . . In ancient literature, he finds some of the most finished models of taste. By English reading, he learns the powers of the language in which he is to speak and write. By logic and mental philosophy, he is taught the art of thinking; by rhetoric and oratory, the art of speaking.

Each of these disciplines is not only crucial for developing a well-rounded individual but is also highly sought after in the labor market. A 2021 survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that the two skills most desired by employers are critical thinking and communication, which employers say most recent graduates lack. These two skills are learned not in the lab, but through writing and close reading, which are activities explicitly taught in literature, philosophy, history, and similar disciplines. An engineering student who has never studied basic composition will struggle to explain clearly his work and abilities not only to a prospective employer in an interview, but also to other contractors when on the job, which could delay important construction projects or result in sub-quality products.

To prepare the strongest possible job candidates, colleges and universities should require every student to take a structured interdisciplinary core curriculum alongside their major-specific courses. Students with a firm grasp of history, mathematics, literature, and other core subjects, in addition to their major, will be best-equipped to succeed in their chosen specialization and to transfer their skills throughout their career.

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