As a result, ACTA has set up What Will They Learn?SM and launched a Web site by the same name ( www.WhatWillTheyLearn.com) to assist families in comparing and selecting schools.
According to the site, a recent study showed that only 31% of college graduates can read and understand a complex book. In another recent survey, only 24% of employers "thought graduates of four-year colleges were 'excellently prepared' for entry-level positions. College seniors perennially fail tests of their civic and historical knowledge. And rates of leisure reading have taken a nosedive."
ACTA's "guide to what college rankings won't tell you" provides a quick way to compare more than 120 schools' offerings in these areas. You can check standings by school name or state, or select one of the subject areas to see a list of the institutions that do and do not require courses in that particular one. "ACTA has launched this free, online college guide," the site says, "to cut through the verbiage in college catalogs and show what really matters: what students will be expected to learn. Especially in this era of rising tuition and uncertain economic prospects, we hope our findings will help students and parents vote with their wallets—and motivate trustees and alumni to demand more of their institutions."
Harry R. Lewis, a ?former Dean at Harvard College, compares today's college course catalogs to "one from column A, one from column B" Chinese restaurant menus.
"There, the requirements that are supposed to make sure your kids receive a well-rounded education often simply call for one course in the humanities, one course in social science, and so on. On some campuses, it doesn't matter at all what courses are chosen, as long as they are in the right categories. Other schools limit the courses so that they meet some special criteria, but there is little sense of how each individual course relates to the others.
"The venerable and honorable notion of 'general education' has, in other words, been reduced to a game. Students have to work their way through a vast menu of general education requirements, and do their best to find courses that fit the various categories as well as their schedules."
He says that studies have demonstrated that college graduates do not know the basic principles of U.S. government because "The vast majority of our colleges have made a course on the broad themes of U.S. history or government optional. This is especially dangerous in America, where nothing holds us together except our democratic principles. If universities don't pass them down, our children will not inherit our nationhood genetically. They can receive that heritage only through learning. That's one key reason that during the college search you must ask: What will they learn?"
Only seven schools made the organization's "A" list—Baylor University, City University of New York-Brooklyn College, City University of New York-Hunter College, Texas A&M University, United States Military Academy, University of Arkansas, and University of Texas-Austin.
