The website “What they will Learn” and the importance of a core curriculum
Ratemyprofessor.com site’s ranking of Ivy League professorial staff teaching
Collegeguide.org and the politicization of the classroom
How much would you be willing to pay to attend a school that had no official general education requirement (or, possibly had one or two areas spottily covered) across the following subject areas: composition; literature; foreign language; US government and history; economics; mathematics and; science? Posed a little differently, assume you were selecting a high school and it didn’t require English (writing), history, math, science, foreign language, or literature. How much would you be willing to pay to go to such a school? A better question is how much money would you pay to avoid going to the school?
No one, currently, is paying money to avoid going to Ivy Leagues schools. Yet, if you examine their curriculum, teaching quality, and freedom of inquiry in the classroom, you might wonder if such a scenario might be a reality in the future.
An examination of the curricula of the schools can be found at the site ‘What will they Learn?’ http://www.whatwilltheylearn.com/. On site is a letter from the former Dean of Harvard, Harry Lewis: “On some campuses, it doesn’t matter at all what courses are chosen, as long as they are in the right categories…At its best, general education is about the unity of knowledge, not about distributed knowledge. Not about spreading courses around, but about making connections between different ideas.” The site then grades each campus’s core curriculum.
CORE CURRICULUM GRADE:
Brown F
Cornell F
Columbia B
Dartmouth C
Harvard D
University of Pennsylvania D
Princeton C
Yale F
Turning to another study regarding the quality of teaching, a recent report from the Center of College Affordability and Productivity compiled reviews from ‘Rate My Professor.com’ of professors at 610 universities. No Ivy League school ranked in the top 100:
QUALITY OF TEACHING (ranking of 610 universities):
111. Princeton University
152. Columbia University
187. University of Pennsylvania
196. Brown University
213. Yale University
247. Harvard University
294. Dartmouth College
414. Cornell University
Details are at “Are Ivy League Professors Good Teachers? By Lynn O'Shaughnessy” http://moneywatch.bnet.com/saving-money/blog/college-solution/are-ivy-league-professors-good-teachers/3881/ Some might discredit these findings as students might skew results if they have a vendetta against a certain professor, but this sample size is too large to be easily manipulated by students or others.
CollegeGuide.org (it is the site of the ISI which reviews, in detail, the curriculum and teaching at over 250 colleges and universities) gives campuses traffic light ratings based on how ‘politicized’ the curriculum is. Specifically: “If a school’s American history course casts the Founding in a dark light, pushes socialistic views of the economy, or claims that the Cold War was a U.S. scheme to rule the world, it is politicized.” If the curriculum is considered highly politicized it receives a red; mildly, a yellow; and open to free inquiry, a green light.
POLITICS IN THE CLASSROOM
Princeton Green
Harvard Yellow
Dartmouth Yellow
Brown Red
Columbia Yellow
University of Pennsylvania Yellow
Cornell Yellow
Yale Yellow
Three different studies covering the scope of core curricula, the quality of the teaching, and the politicization of the classroom across some of the most selective schools in the country come up with alarming findings. Taking Brown as an example, it gets an “F” for its general educational program (it doesn’t have one); barely places in the top third among the 600 schools sampled in quality of teaching; and gets a red light for having an extremely politicized classroom. If Brown were a student, would you accept it? Ironically, during the recent admissions cycle it accepted less than 14% of its applicants. The recent round of early decision applicants increased over 20%.
Don’t misinterpret this article. There are huge swathes of academic excellence throughout the Ivy League, if you know where to find them. You need to do your homework before you attend, to discover what it is you want to get out of a university. Learn about the best courses, the best professors, and the top majors Do not go in passively expecting to be served up excellence. Even in the venerable Ivy League that is a possible recipe for disaster.