The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has just issued a report card, Shining the Light, on the performance of the University System of Georgia. Take a look at USG’s performance in the key areas graded by ACTA with a “passing” (P) or “failing” (F) mark:
General Education: P
Intellectual Diversity: F
Board Structure & Transparency: P
Board Accomplishments: F
Cost & Effectiveness: F
One aspect of this analysis struck me as particularly appropriate. In evaluating USG’s general education requirements, ACTA excluded from consideration “narrow, esoteric or single author courses,” i.e., it not only looked at what core courses are required but also at their breadth and richness.
It is to be hoped that ACTA moves on to grade many more of our public–and private–universities.
Brayden Cagle is pursuing an alternative career path after high school. Instead of pondering Plato at a four-year college, he is apprenticing as a heating, ventilation and air conditioning technician.
In this episode of Higher Ed Now, the second of two conversations devoted to core texts, ACTA’s Academic Affairs Fellow Veronica Bryant speaks in Spanish with Clemente Cox, classics and philosophy scholar and the Academic Director of the Center of General Studies at the Universidad de los Andes.
Here’s your task: Make the world better. Determine who needs to be involved, make a plan and execute it. Then devise a means to concretely measure the plan’s societal impact and present the results to stakeholders.
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