Title:
College Guide Aims to Help Students Avoid a 'Thin
Education'
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
A new college guide in the United States compares
educational requirements in seven subjects. These
include math, science, writing and United States
history or government. The other subjects are
economics, foreign language and literature.
The free online guide is from the American Council
of Trustees and Alumni. The council is a nonprofit
group that supports liberal arts education.
Its president, Anne Neal, says these areas of
knowledge are needed to succeed in a twenty-first
century society and an increasingly connected world.
Yet she told VOA's Faiza Elmasry it was surprising
how many students can graduate with, in her words, a
"thin education."
Forty-two of the one hundred colleges and
universities surveyed received the lowest marks.
This meant they required two or fewer of the seven
subjects. Five schools received a top grade for
requiring six subjects. These were Brooklyn College
in New York City, Texas A&M, the University of
Texas-Austin, West Point and the University of
Arkansas.
Robert Costrell is professor of education reform and
economics at the University of Arkansas. He says
many, if not all, of the top American colleges once
had a core curriculum -- a set of courses required
for all students.
But over the years, many have dropped these
requirements. Or they have "watered them down,"
Professor Costrell says, into what became known as
distribution requirements.
This system lets a student choose from a number of
different courses to satisfy a requirement.
Professor Costrell says schools should not only
re-examine what they teach. They should also measure
what students have learned for example, through some
form of examinations or papers.
A report in October from the College Board showed
that college prices continue to rise.
But Anne Neal from the American Council of Trustees
and Alumni says higher prices do not guarantee a
better general education. In fact, the group found
that the higher the tuition, the more likely that
students have to develop their own general
education.
The college guide is on the Web at
whatwilltheylearn.com. Anne Neal says her group is
surveying more colleges. The hope, she says, is to
discover what college graduates have really learned,
and how ready they are to compete in the global
marketplace.
And that's the VOA Special English Education Report.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
