One area that Jason Brennan and Phillip Magness take to task in their book, Cracks In The Ivory Tower, The Moral Mess of Higher Education, is general education requirements.
They introduce a framework of Bootleggers and Baptists early on in the book which they generalize to general education. Baptists want some high-minded goal, whereas Bootleggers want to personally benefit. Bootleggers rarely announce their goals, and instead follow the Baptist party line to avoid scrutiny. Jason and Phil show that noble goals like improving doctor’s handwriting often fail to solve the problems, while benefitting political constituencies that are hard to remove once created, particularly because of collective action problems.
To prove this argument, they hypothesize that disciplines with poor job markets will be the disciplines that push the hardest for requirements. Economics, a degree with strong job market performance avoids pushing for (new) gen-eds, whereas English, with weak job markets tends to push hard. Economics departments are scrapped for resources relative to students, where English departments are often the largest departments on campus. They posit that the mismatch of teaching supply and course demand is largely the result of institutional rent-seeking.
Then, the authors theorize and review results of several gen-edrequirements. For instance, college graduates have poor writing skills, so colleges mandate writing classes. Ditto for foreign language, history, sociology, etc. When one closely examines the outcomes of mandating writing and foreign language, it’s unclear that skills have been meaningfully built. This creates a vicious cycle where gen-ed requirements become more expansive.
Following this, the authors move onto the ethics of gen-edrequirements and argue that forcing students to take classes where they don’t learn skills is both inefficient and goes against the school’s fiduciary and moral obligations. They end the argument by pointing out several negative downstream effects, such as starving otherwise demand-driven budgets, and wasting most involved people’s money and time.
This argument convincingly explains why implementing general education requirements is a mistake, but doesn’t significantly explore reformation. Why do professional programs avoid this gen-ed glut? Are there alternate methods to solve the issue of poor college writing, or is the issue unsolvable?
Jason and Phil note in their argument that med-schools don’t have the same glut of unimportant gen-eds that undergraduate education has. This seems to be the case for professional schools in general, which seem to be more specialized. Instead of trying to create a well-rounded individual, assessing the tools necessary to be prepared for a specific career may be more fruitful. Many professional schools accompany accreditation exams, which serves as a clear cut way of viewing school performance. Liberal arts programs are not afflicted by these same standards, and as a result, it may be harder to assess performance.
Given this explanation, it appears that testing and clear-cut standards may be the answer to solid performance, encouraging excellence and best practices. In an article published in the Economics of Education Review, Bishop, Moriarty, and Manefind that New York students are about a grade level ahead of their non-New York peers, in large part because of standardized Regents Examinations. If standardized work at both the professional level and secondary education, it would merit explanation if it weren’t also able to help out undergraduate education.
One challenge to generically prescribing standardized tests is that certain skills like writing and critical analysis may not be measured adequately. While it may be challenging to directly measure this skill, its likely better assessed by the people employing rather than by a college English professor. Academia has a certain style to it which may not be applicable to the working world. Plus, incentives are in place for academic departments to not solve the issue of poor writing, and instead tack on more classes. Therefore, writing would be better assessed by cutting out academic middlemen, and instead facilitating writing or research projects with local employers.
This would facilitate positive-sum collaborations where students establish professional credibility while providing papers an employer would be able to use. This isn’t just a theoretical benefit. When colleges partner with employers to provide academic credit for applied work, these college co-ops result in higher starting salaries, graduation rates, and job offer rates.
A final avenue for reform are massive open online courses, or MOOCs for short. Due to the internet’s widespread availability, Deans and other college administrators can sever the tie between required information and department power. The marginal cost of increasing the supply of English or History classes is significantly lower when one doesn’t have to hire a full-time faculty member to do so. Long-term administrators can decrease the bargaining power of rent-seeking departments, and put themselves in an easier position when the budget is tight.
Although general education requirements are mostly a rent-seeking arrangement, one should have hope that arrangements may change as tools for reform look increasingly appetizing.
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