Tag: Curriculum

Compressing to Three

As we noted yesterday, there are four ways to go about getting university degrees from four years to three. One, cutting grad requirements from 120 to 90 credits, isn’t serious. A second, upping the use of prior learning assessment (or, in extremis, bringing back grade 13), is barely half-serious. That leaves curriculum compression and curriculum re-design. Curriculum compression is the significantly easier path. No need to change anything other than the speed of students’ path through the system. By getting them

Read More »

New Economies, New University

Yesterday, we looked at how the economy was being increasingly divided into a successful, productive globally-traded goods sector, and a more sheltered mostly public-service focused sector. I also noted how certain parts of the university such as engineering, computer science, biomedicine, and finance/management have tended to adopt the views of people involved in the first group of industries, while arts, education, social work, etc., align with the second. This matters because, increasingly, governments are getting concerned about productivity. Due to

Read More »

The Benefits of Liberal Arts: Are Humanities Fit for Purpose?

The “liberal” in “liberal arts” derives from the latin root for “free,” but not the way that most people think. The medieval Liberal Arts were not free in the sense that they promoted freedom or free thinking, but rather in the sense that it was the education that “free” people (i.e., the rich) chose to pursue. The term connotes conspicuous consumption rather than freedom. Because Liberal Arts – and in particular the humanities – were always the preserve of the

Read More »

Liberal Arts: A Global Trend?

One of the really interesting mini-trends in global higher education these days is the recent spread of Liberal Arts colleges into parts of the world where there is no tradition of such institutions. Singapore has invited Yale to set up a Liberal Arts college at National University Singapore, with the stated aim of creating an Asian model of Liberal Arts. In Europe, the newly-created Amsterdam University College has brought a new and very structured approach to Liberal Arts. And, as

Read More »