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Students don't need to rethink their major -- colleges need to rethink their curriculum requirements

A new report from the Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce reminds us that some college majors have better employment prospects than others. This is a useful admonition for those struggling to meet ever-rising tuition costs and cold comfort for those with high student loan debts and no job.

The choice of major is important and college trustees should make sound choices about which academic programs deserve funding and which ones should be discontinued. But the Georgetown Center's advice is incomplete: core collegiate requirements are also crucial for employment, to say nothing of citizenship. Employers have long been complaining that many graduates of both two and four year institutions have poor writing skills and lack many other characteristics of excellence that they want to see. They note the growing need for other core skills, including foreign language.

For the rest of the explanation of why college graduates, even in a recession, are having a harder time finding jobs than they should, turn to Academically Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. When 36% of the graduates of the class of 2009 show - at most - minimal growth in such core collegiate skills as critical reasoning and expository writing, are we surprised that they don't find jobs?

ACTA's core curriculum project, www.whatwilltheylearn.com gives the rest of the explanation for why our costly higher education system serves the interests of students and the economy so poorly. Of seven key subjects that every student needs, regardless of major - mathematics, natural science, expository writing, foreign language, literature, American history or government, and basic economics - 61% of our colleges and universities require three or less, and 29% require between zero and two. Whether the student majored in engineering, architecture, or comparative literature, an education without a solid core, even from a prestigious institution, runs the danger of being a very expensive junk bond.

-Michael Poliakoff
Vice President of Policy

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Posted by dburnett on January 04, 2012 at January 4, 2012 05:18 PM

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