A college degree is not what it used to be | Eastern North Carolina Now

    How shall they learn unless they are taught? The corollary to that is: How shall they learn what they need to know unless they are taught what it is they need to know.

    Back many years ago I remember in one of my education courses being taught that higher education training can be divided into two types of education: Liberal arts and technical education. Technical education was supposed to train one for a specific profession or trade...such as medicine, law, engineering and then specific types of medicine, law, engineering etc. On the other hand liberal arts programs were designed to provide a grounding in the essentials of knowledge that have been passed from generation to generation and, while not designed to prepare one specifically for a particular profession, it was supposed to give one the inherent tools to use in "on the job training" or "further study," such as graduate school. One of my professors explained it as "horizontal vs. vertical" curriculum.

    What he meant was that a vertical curriculum focused on taking the student more and more in depth in a more limited body of knowledge. The picture he drew on the board was an inverted pyramid. A horizontal curriculum was not intended to provide as much in-depth knowledge in any one area but rather the basics in many different areas. In terms of courses, the way a liberal arts curriculum displayed itself was usually a set of basic courses in the first two years of college that most everyone took. These were typically in the humanities--English (composition, literature, writing etc.), history (remember Western Civ?) and often some government or Political Science, and maybe even sociology and/or psychology, math, science (often with multiple disciplines such as biology, physical, natural, chemistry etc.), economics, the Fine Arts (music, art, drama etc.) and often a foreign language was required. Then there were a few electives. The last two years of the baccalaureate program concentrated on a major, or a concentration into which you went more in depth with not only more courses but more rigorous courses.

    In more recent years the number of electives has increased and the number of required courses across the liberal arts curriculum has shrunk.

    Now a new website has assessed hundreds of colleges and universities to find out precisely what they teach. And what they found may surprise you.

    For example, of the 49 colleges in North Carolina, only 12 now require a foreign language. Only 3 require American History while 2 require any Economics. And you can graduate from Appalachian, Guilford, Pfeiffer, UNC-Chapel Hill and Western Carolina without taking any math. Only Wingate and Gardner-Webb require any Economics.

    From a different perspective. Gardner-Webb has the strongest core curriculum, requiring all student to complete some coursework in Composition, Literature, Foreign Language, U. S. History, Economics, Math and Science.

    You can review the data on all of North Carolina's colleges clicking here.

    You will also note in the data that the quality of the curriculum as measure by these standards has very little to do with the cost of the school, the size of the school nor the graduation rate. A cursory review of the graduation rate upholds the previously determined maxim: The easier it is to get in a school the less likely most of its students will graduate.

    But back far enough away and what you see is: A college education is not what it used to be.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.