Hopkins received a grade of an F in August from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) on grounds that the University provides an inadequate general education. ACTA conducted its second annual “What Will They Learn” project, whose goal was to ensure that students have a broad general education. 718 schools were graded on having seven core classes, which included composition, a survey of literature, economics, American history or government, mathematics, science and an intermediate knowledge of a foreign language.
“Our organization . . . is concerned with ensuring that the nation’s students receive a rich liberal arts education. We think that a strong core curriculum with a set of requirements ensures that students graduate with a broad foundation of knowledge that they’ll need throughout their career,” ACTA senior researcher Michael Pomeranz said.
“Employers continually say that students graduate college unprepared in certain fields such as writing, basic math, American history knowledge and economic knowledge.”
Hopkins received an F because of its lack of core class requirements. Although Hopkins has both a distribution requirement, wherein each student needs to take a certain number of credits outside his major, and a writing requirement, which constitutes a number of writing-intensive courses, the ACTA did not feel that such requirements comprise a broad enough level of education.
However, Hopkins administrators tend to have pride in the less strict undergraduate curriculum.
“At Hopkins, we believe in giving our students the freedom and responsibility to chart their own course of study. It is up to Hopkins students to decide whether they wish to take a broad range of classes or concentrate in a single area — albeit with some distribution requirements,” Vice Dean for Undergraduate Education Steven David, wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
“For students who do not like this approach, there are many other schools that require a core set of classes. We are comfortable with our approach and believe it meets the best needs of our students.”
ACTA’s grade was based on the fact that none of the organization’s criteria for a core curriculum were listed as requirements at Hopkins.
“In foreign language, only certain students are required to have intermediate level study, which we think is really a prerequisite,” Pomeranz said. “If we’re going to be serious about learning about other cultures, we need to start with a knowledge of a foreign language, so for college graduates not to have that isn’t really right.”
The ACTA also felt that, while Hopkins does offer many Writing Intensive courses, they do not count as composition courses because they focus on a subject, not directly on how to write at the college level. Though Hopkins does offer a wide range of Expository Writing classes, it does not require that all students take it.
“Unless a composition class is composition specific, it won’t really do the job of instructing composition,” Pomeranz continued. “It might be a very good class, we’re not saying that they are unproductive classes, but if they don’t teach composition and only composition, professors in those classes have a tendency to teach things other than composition, so students come out with more education, but not necessarily able to compose at the college level.”
“Students have never formally learned to write, certainly not at the college level. The very mechanics of the composition, word choice, syntax, grammar, rhetoric, argument. Those subjects aren’t covered and wouldn’t be covered in a subject that is writing intensive. It’s not that we are against writing-intensive courses, it’s just that the courses aren’t about composition,” Pomeranz said.
The ACTA also found problems with the distribution requirements. Though humanities and quantitative classes are offered, a student is able to choose in which subject he orshe takes the classes. A student could graduate from Hopkins without ever taking a math class.
“Humanities and social science majors can choose classes in quantitative and natural sciences, and engineering areas, so presumably a student could take only math and not science, or only science and not math, and avoiding his/her weaker field, which may look better on a transcript but really isn’t the most academically responsible thing,” Pomeranz said.
“I would dispute the notion that it’s academically responsible to tell anyone that he or she gets to be a science person, and is excused from English composition, or a writing person doesn’t really need to know math beyond the level of algebra,” Pomeranz added. “A person with that kind of education isn’t really a fully educated person at the college level.”
In the face of such accusations by the ACTA, the professors and administrators at Hopkins laid out the view that the type of education Hopkins strives for, namely a liberal arts one, is something that isn’t defined by a certain set of “core” classes.
“Students do have to expose themselves to coursework in math and science and the faculty has determined that is sufficient for distribution among the disciplines,” Philip Tang, Senior Advisor to the Provost in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, said. “But, again, the point of a liberal arts education is not that you graduate with a very specific pre-determined set of skills like doing calculus. It’s that you graduate with the ability to analyze, to think critically and to learn.”
Such a rationale was exactly that employed by David in rebutting the ACTA’s suggestions that a foreign language be one of the core class requirements.
“[The ACTA] may believe that foreign language should be taught to everyone but that’s their view,” David said. “One can make a case that some students are better served taking other classes e.g. in Philosophy, Art History, Statistics, etc. rather than getting a rudimentary command of a language.”
And that logic, according to David, extends to other core requirements laid out by the ACTA.
“We do not believe it is necessary for everyone to take a math class, but encourage our students to develop their quantitative skills,” David said.
But Hopkins wasn’t the only college that received a failing grade. Brown, Cornell, and Yale also got Fs. Harvard and University of Pennsylvania received a D, while Dartmouth and Princeton received a C. Columbia, which is known for it’s core program, received a B.
Dean of Enrollment William Conley pointed out the fallacy of giving otherwise excellent schools poor grades for a lack of a core curriculum, especially when the students that enter those schools usually do so with a rather broad base of knowledge that they gained from high school.
“ACTA clearly believes that the absence of a core curriculum leads to an incomplete education. So, Brown also receives an‘F’ and Harvard and UPenn score a ‘D’ because they only require 2 of the 7 core areas. Hopkins students enter with a deep and broad secondary school curriculum with Advanced Placement courses that would seem to fit many of the areas ACTA cites as a critical core,” Conley said. “Moreover, just because we do not have a required core does not mean many of our students do not, through elective choices, take courses that meet many, if not all, of the ACTA criteria.”
ACTA felt that while many Hopkins students may come in with a broad base of knowledge, there is no way of knowing whether every student that comes in received that education in high school. “Obviously Hopkins tends to have a high caliber of students, who had access to college courses. Not everyone has an AP course,” Pomeranz said. “Even if you say the average high school AP class is at a college level, not everyone has had that class, and at least for those students they should have the opportunity to graduate knowing Survey American government . . . even if you say it is, not everyone has had that class. Very few kids come in with college credit in composition, U.S. History, economics, math, science, foreign language and literature.”
Out of the 728 schools graded, two percent received As, 35 percent Bs, 29 percent Cs, 19 percent Ds, and 14 percent Fs. The schools that received the strongest grades had very broad core curricula. Military schools and historically black schools tended to do very well.
“The real story here is about colleges that promise students all around the world, that if you’re enterprising and have your head up, often you will, but oftentimes students come in and take what seems appealing or interesting, or catering to the professor’s particular research interest they want, and then graduate years later and say they wish they had taken a survey literature course, or it turns out I said I’m not a math person, but it won’t suffice in this economy where I’m going to change jobs 11 times,” Pomeranz said.
However, Hopkins administrators took pride in what abhorred the ACTA: a free approach to education. “Liberal arts schools have a mission to teach you how to think critically, how to analyze information and how to communicate. Some schools fulfill that mission with a core curriculum, others don’t, but they’re all attempting to produce effective thinkers, not repositories of particular facts,” Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Hopkins Lloyd Minor said. “The Johns Hopkins approach gives students a lot of freedom to learn critical thinking by getting into their areas of interest at great depth. That approach is the right one for us. We believe that Johns Hopkins students are seekers for knowledge, and — within certain parameters, such as the major and distribution requirements — we believe that search should go wherever students’ intellectual curiosity takes them.”
Pomeranz said that Hopkins will get a better grade if it works toward having more core classes. “Hopkins is a school with a long history of being a leader in education. It’s a shame that all undergraduates aren’t exposed to the sort of general education requirement that they can handle,” he said. “Students aren’t exposed to the strong undergraduate teaching in multiple fields that they might be. If Hopkins changes the requirements so that composition is required, and that foreign language is required up to the intermediate level, then their grade will go up. And we feel that this will be in the best interest of the Hopkins students.”
However, Hopkins students found the idea of having a specific set of classes they would need to take constricting and impractical in the real world.
“I think it’s better that we don’t have a core curriculum, because that way students will be able to study what they actually want to,” senior Amy Park said. “If we do have a core curriculum, students will instead spend time studying something might not matter in the present or the future. It is important that we get more time to cultivating our interests.”
“I think the Hopkins graduation requirement system is good as it is,” she continued. “Hopkins sets a boundary by requiring students to earn distribution credits, but at the same time it lets students do so with a wide array of classes, thus providing freedom and opportunities to explore their interests. It’s a good middle ground.”
Junior Charles Duyk had a similar viewpoint, although he was willing to admit that the idea could possibly be something of use.
“I don’t think the adoption of a core curriculum is in the best interest of the student body,” he said, “unless it is created with a clear set of goals. They shouldn’t be esoteric goals, but something attainable, something that promotes interdisciplinary communication. For example, it’d be interesting to see biology students studying with computer science students in a class everyone would have to take.”
But in the end, both Park and Duyk voiced the opinion that Hopkins is not a place for a generic span of knowledge.
“I would dislike being forced to study something that I’m not interested in. Hopkins is a pre-professional, pre-graduate school, and I think it’s a good thing. It prepares us for life after college, where specialists are increasingly rewarded,” Duyk said.
“Specializing in one area will also help us get jobs and get into grad schools,” Park said.
Junior Michael Weinberger elaborated.
“If a Hopkins student is applying for a job, they’re applying for a job that is presumably somewhat related to his interests, which is most likely reflected in his major,” Weinberger said. “Thus, having specialized in something that one likes in college will help greatly in the future.
Indeed, that seemed to be the nature of a Hopkins education at its essence. And it doesn’t seem like it is about to change anytime soon.
“We do not need some outside group telling us how to teach our students. The US is fortunate to have a wide range of universities that vary in their requirements,” David said. “Those that seek a core curriculum have many other places they can go. We trust that our students and advisers working together will receive the kind of demanding education for which Hopkins is known.”
“If you’re looking for a general education, don’t go to Hopkins,” Weingerger said.
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