Inside Higher Education published a story on how SUNY Buffalo and UVA are experimenting with their general education models. The SUNY Buffalo model is quite intriguing. According to the article, “students will be required to take courses in four categories: communication literacy, math and quantitative reasoning, scientific literacy and inquiry and diversity learning.” This is a significantly streamlined list from what many of us probably deal with at our institutions. I applaud such efforts to introduce coherence and structure to one of the core elements of college study.
As an academic advisor, my main frustration with general education is not the categories, but the plethora of choices within those categories. One part of the advising is teaching model is helping students structure their general education in a meaningful way. It is difficult to accomplish this task when careful thought is not given to what goes into the categories. It is not always obvious, even to me, how some courses contribute to said requirement. Additionally, the sheer number of courses satisfying a particular requirement can be overwhelming for students. At my institution, students can choose from roughly 100 courses to satisfy their Literature and the Arts Humanities requirement. It is challenging to create a coherent framework when you have so many options. I look forward to following the results of these experiments.
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