What will they actually learn?
In our struggle to defend Western Culture, it is nice to know we have allies. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni is a non-profit that has a wonderful website grading (A-F) colleges and universities on their commitment to a well-rounded general education. The seven areas graded are: Composition, Literature, Foreign Language, U.S. Government or History, Economics, Mathematics, and Science. The grades are collected on whatwilltheylearn.com, and their blog can be found at www.goactablog.org. As former Harvard Dean Harry Lewis explains in a letter featured on the survey site:
“The venerable and honorable notion of “general education” has, in other words, been reduced to a game. Students have to work their way through a vast menu of general education requirements, and do their best to find courses that fit the various categories as well as their schedules.
This is deplorable indeed. At its best, general education is about the unity of knowledge, not about distributed knowledge. Not about spreading courses around, but about making connections between different ideas. Not about the freedom to combine random ingredients, but about joining an ancient lineage of the learned and wise. And it has a goal, too: producing an enlightened, self-reliant citizenry, pluralistic and diverse but united by democratic values.”
Out of 714 surveyed, there are only 16 on the “A List.” Over half, received a “C” or lower, including Harvard (D) and Yale (F). Only 4% included Economics in their core curriculum. The only school to meet or exceed all seven gen. ed. requirements was Thomas Aquinas College, a private liberal arts school that emphasizes the Great Books. Boasting “no textbooks…no lectures…no majors, no minors, no electives, no specializations…The College aims at providing its students with a thorough grounding in the arts of thinking and a broad and integrated vision of the whole of life and learning.”
It’s nice to know some small corners of education still exist in the world. A core curriculum allows students to enter into a common dialogue with their peers and, if that curriculum includes the Great Books, with the greatest minds of all time.
Great Books MLA at Faulkner University 
Very interesting. Faulkner was not on the list of Alabama institutions surveyed, but a cursory look at the subjects they ask about leads me to think we would score well in their view. We require six of the seven courses they’re interested in, and the seventh (economics) is part of a core social science group including psychology and sociology from which students must select one course.
Interesting website. I look forward to looking at it more in-depth in the future. I, like Dr. J, was particularly interested in the Alabama schools listed (also absent were schools like Huntingdon, Spring Hill, Mobile University, etc.). I found it odd that they listed Samford (my alma mater) as not requiring literature. My suspicion is that the integrated core curriculum Samford utilizes makes it difficult to differentiate some course requirements. For example, the core class “Cultural Perspectives” is similar to Faulkner’s “Western Cultural Heritate” in that it integrates history and literature. It seems almost too commonsensical that literature and history be studied together in order to understand the context in which various pieces of literature were composed. Also, like Dr. J points out about Faulkner, Samford offers Economics as an option within the required course option under Social Sciences.
Another thing that jumped off the page at me was the graduation rates of the various schools. With the exception of the two private schools (Samford and Birmingham-Southern) and the two largest state universities (Alabama and Auburn) all the others were below 50%. If so many students are failing to graduate, is it any wonder why ignorance is so high in a broad range of topics like those the American Council of Trustees and Alumni use as criteria? We can’t expect students to do much integration of subject matter if they are only exposed to a limited scope of subjects (for whatever the reason).
I think you hit the nail on the head though noting that it’s “[n]ot about spreading courses around, but about making connections between different ideas. Not about the freedom to combine random ingredients, but about joining an ancient lineage of the learned and wise.” Simply requiring all seven of the specific subjects used as criteria here does not guarantee any real integration of the material in an interdisciplinary fashion. That’s why I think integrated core curriculum like Samford’s and like Faulkner’s Western Cultural Heritage are a good via media between standard issue higher education and a completely nontraditional approach that may be good at integrating subject matter but difficult to apply beyond academia.