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A
group of tradition-minded scholars determined to turn universities
away from faddish courses have won the authority to judge and
accredit liberal-arts colleges.
The
Federal Department of Education, in an unusual decision, has granted
a group of tradition-minded scholars the authority to judge and
accredit liberal-arts colleges.
The
organizers of the group, called the American Academy for Liberal
Education, say their aim is to turn the liberal arts curriculum away
from faddish courses and back to solid surveys in literature,
history and philosophy that were typical core courses 30 years ago.
Among
the organizers are prominent academics like Edwin 0. Wilson, the
Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard science professor; Jacques Barzun,
the Columbia philosopher and historian, and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese,
the Emory historian.
Education
Secretary Richard S. Riley late last month formally recognized the
Washington-based academy as a national accrediting agency, which
means it can now certify institutions as qualified to receive
Federal financing, including Stafford student loans and research
money.
In
a recent interview, Dr. Barzun said he and other scholars founded
the academy in 1992 because “students haven’t learned to think,
and the leading universities are leading us down into a pit."
Jeffrey
Wallin, the academy president, said: “One third of all college
courses are remedial. The students come illiterate and leave
unlearned. We’re against the frivolity of higher education. The
core curriculum is the basis of the liberal arts curriculum, and
it’s in disastrous shape.”
Currently,
colleges and universities become accredited by one of six regional
associations. The Middle States agency, for example, accredits the
whole range of institutions within its geographical area, from
Princeton University to Bronx County Community College. The system
has been criticized by educators who say it makes no sense to have
strictly regional organizations evaluate such disparate
institutions.
The
academy is the only other group to be recognized as an accrediting
agency. Approval by the academy will not replace accreditation by a
regional association, but some institutions will elect to be
certified by it rather than a regional group. The academy will also
offer its imprimatur so that potential students and their parents
will know that a particular institution has a strong core
curriculum.
Recognition
will be determined by how well the college or university meets 17
standards. The faculty must, for example, emphasize teaching over
research; senior faculty must be involved in teaching undergraduate
education, and the college must require all its liberal arts
students to take broad courses in the sciences, languages, literary
classics, philosophy, history, politics, economics and mathematics.
“Specialization
is a crime against undergraduates,” Professor Barzun said.
“What’s needed in today’s world and what we’re trying to
develop are people who are quickly adaptable rather than masters of
a given subject.”
Mr.
Wallin said a number of large universities were guilty of giving
undergraduates too much choice. He said that at a large Midwestern
university there were now some 4,000 courses that qualify for the
core curriculum. “It’s meaningless,” he said.
Some
colleges are lining up to get accreditation, a two-year process.
James H. Daughdrill, president of Rhodes College in Memphis,
said his college was seeking accreditation from the academy because
“we can learn from a group of people devoted to some of the same
things that we care about.”
One
of the mast profound questions in education today, he said, is,
“Can human interaction - and life-changing teacher-student
experiences - be done electronically?”
“The
academy made us think about that in a way that we hadn’t done
before,” he said. “It made us ask if we may need some
intermediate people to form a bridge between the techies in our
computer center and teachers.”
William
Allen, dean of the James Madison College at Michigan State
University in East Lansing, said he was seeking accreditation from
the academy to help attract a more diverse student body.
“We
want more people to know about us so that we can attract students
from beyond our immediate area,” he said. “We think diversity of
the student body will help us to teach what we’re trying to
teach.”
Dr.
Barzun said a large part of the academy’s work would be to keep
colleges honest. “Those glossy statements in the college
catalogues usually don’t mean a thing. It’s advertising for
something that may have vanished during the growth of the research
syndrome which makes graduate students do most of the teaching.”
He
added, “Counting the number of Nobel Prizes at an institution may
be only recording extinct volcanoes."
Copyright
1995, The New York Times
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