This fall, for the first time in a long time, I am teaching a class taken only by first-semester, first-year students. A required general education course that includes a lot
Given enrollment pressures, devaluation of the importance of general education, and efforts to cut costs, general education courses—especially those students are expected to complete during their first year, such as
The start of the academic year is nearly upon us. On our campuses, student orientations are in full swing, new faculty orientations are being planned, and faculty are planning their
For a number of reasons, including the publication of Rescuing Socrates, participating in a wonderful seminar on general education sponsored by the Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities, and
Roosevelt Montás’s Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation (2021) is both a defense of the Columbia University general education
Many universities, especially larger public ones, have organized their academic structures so that there is a dedicated division that focuses on aspects of undergraduate academic success that span disciplines and
Like many academics, I recently watched Netflix’s The Chair, and like a lot of those academics—especially those from a humanities background—much of it seemed quite painfully realistic. The mess that
Since the spring of 2020, predominantly White institutions (PWIs) of higher education have felt understandable pressure to examine everything we do through an equity lens. Colleges and universities have, for
Education critics often lament the decline of general education or chastise its irrelevance to our students’ futures (Delbanco & Peede, 2020; Mintz, 2020). While liberal arts traditionalists resent that students
I’m sure you have seen the articles describing the decrease in women’s submissions to top research journals since the pandemic began in the spring (e.g., Flaherty, 2020, Viglione, 2020). The
