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Vice president of policy brings attention to narrow academic specialties
ACTA's vice president of policy, Dr. Michael Poliakoff, contributed to a discussion raised by Mark Bauerlein on a Chronicle of Higher Education blog.
Poliakoff shed light on so-called "boutique courses" which contribute very little to the educational foundation of students. Despite alarming gaps in the knowledge of college graduates, these niche classes seem to be gaining traction at some institutions.
For the ostensible death agonies of the humanities, Nussbaum would like us to put the gravamen on an external enemy rather than colleges and universities. But Pogo, not Professor Nussbaum has it right. The enemy is us.Item: Hamilton College, whose annual tuition and fees stand at $41,280, offers, intra alia, "Video Game Nation," a humanities course that, "[i]nvestigates how to critically interpret and analyze video games and the roles they play in visual and popular culture, and how to test the application of these approaches to various issues in gaming and digital media culture more generally. Topics and themes include genre and aesthetics, the game industry, spectatorship, play, narrative, immersion, gender, race, militarism, violence and labor. (Writing-intensive.)"
Item: Vassar College (at $43,190) presents as a First-Year Writing Seminar "Hip Hop and Critical Citizenship."
Item: Furman University (at $38,088) offers "Clothing as Self Expression" and "Beer and Society."
I could go on. You can find courses like these by the dozens in college catalogs, often fulfilling "core" requirements. Did Corporate America, or Capitol Hill foist this nonsense on well-meaning liberal arts colleges? No, these are the self-inflicted wounds of faculty who would rather ride the hobby horses of their narrow specialties than provide the kind of general education that all students need to become independent, analytical thinkers.
Professor Bauerlein properly takes note of the humanities at West Point. Every one of the military service academies requires a survey of literature. The liberal arts, including the humanities, still thrive where faculties are willing to structure the curriculum in answer to the question, "what does it mean to be an educated person," rather than "what’s in it for me or my department." Check out the “A” list on www.whatwilltheylearn.com to see how it is done, often on limited budgets. 36% of the Class of 2009 is back home with their parents and even more are mired in student loan debt that their poorly designed baccalaureate degrees leave
them ill-equipped to repay.Considering that we outspend per college student every industrialized nation in the world,
we have a right to higher standards and better results, and it is no surprise that a lot of taxpayers, parents, and students are darkly eyeing the Ivory Tower as the next site to occupy.
Often supported by the faculty who enjoy teaching these classes, ACTA worries that these niche classes are elbowing robust, foundational courses in key subjects off of students' class schedules.
Posted by dburnett on November 16, 2011 at November 16, 2011 02:00 PM
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