BROAD CURRICULUM REFORM
IS NEEDED IF STUDENTS
ARE TO MASTER CORE SKILLS

Robert M. Diamond

Syracuse University

Editorial notes: Robert M. Diamond is assistant vice-chancellor for instructional development at Syracuse University. He is the author of Designing and Assessing Courses and Curricula, to be published fall 1997 by Jossey-Bass Publishers. This article is copyright (c) 1997 by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc., and is reprinted here by permission of the author. I have added some formatting, links, and emphases. DAS

Reports and critics inside and outside of the academy continue to raise serious questions about whether college students are learning enough, and whether their classes adequately prepare them to function in the world after they graduate. What's at the root of these concerns? Is it that faculty members don't work hard enough at teaching? Do they disagree on what the basic goals of an undergraduate education should be?

The problem is not a lack of faculty effort. Studies consistently show that 50-to-60-hour work weeks are more the rule than the exception and, further, that most faculty members are decent teachers. The widespread use of teaching innovations that incorporate e-mail, the World-Wide Web, and other experimental strategies substantiate the fact that many professors continue to work at improving their pedagogy.

What's more, a lack of consensus on the goals for an undergraduate education also is not the issue. Far more agreement than disagreement exists among faculty members on what skills students should have when they graduate.

I submit that the continuing concerns arise from the unwillingness of professors and administrators to confront fundamental -- although certainly complicated -- issues about how to establish priorities and formulate coherent curricula.

In conducting workshops over the past decade on how to design curricula, I have asked considerably more than 1,000 faculty members -- from a cross section of academic disciplines and institutions -- the same question: "What basic competencies or skills should every college graduate have?" The responses have been remarkably consistent. They typically include

• skills in communicating (writing, speaking, reading, and listening),
• mathematics (especially basic statistics), problem solving, and critical thinking;
• interpersonal skills (such as working in groups and leading them);
• computer literacy; and, most recently,
• appreciation of cultural diversity and the ability to adapt to innovation and change.

Of course, most of us would add to this list

• knowledge in the student's major discipline and
• some general knowledge of other core disciplines in the humanities and sciences.

Despite this broad agreement, however, students, parents, employers, legislators, and many of us within academe believe that far too many students still graduate without mastering the core skills.

The reasons are fundamental.

• First, higher education rarely deals with the goals of instruction directly and has avoided stating them in measurable terms. Institutions have been much more comfortable measuring the quality of their institutions by indirect indices -- the degrees held by faculty members, faculty publications and honors, and the number of dollars received in grants -- than by what students have learned. Indirect measurements of quality avoid the inevitable fact that once you have stated your goals in measurable terms, you become accountable for assessing how well you are meeting those goals and for making difficult decisions if you are not doing so.
• The second basic problem involves the design of curricula. Courses and programs rarely are designed around the goal of providing each student with the chance to attain the competencies we agree on. Instead, faculty members serving on curriculum committees often see their first priorities as retaining required courses that they and their colleagues have spent time creating, as well as maintaining enrollments for themselves and their departments. The first priority is not really the development of a cohesive, well-structured curriculum.
• The third problem is that, at many institutions, faculty members receive little reward for devoting significant amounts of time and energy to improving courses and curricula. While most faculty members support giving greater weight to teaching and developing curricula when promotions and tenure are awarded, the operational criteria used to determine such rewards have not yet changed among members of most promotion-and-tenure committees.
• Fourth, higher education has been able to avoid hard questions -- and, so, it has. Even with outside criticism, we have not had sufficient impetus to overcome resistance and inertia. Despite research to the contrary, a good number of faculty members continue to believe that many of the basic competencies that students need cannot be fairly assessed. These faculty members also clearly see the possible downside of stating goals in measurable terms, and their fears have been strong enough to deter all but the most persistent or persuasive administrators to back off when questions are raised about assessment of educational outcomes.
• Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, many people in higher education do not know how to design courses and curricula very well. They really are not sure what questions to ask, what options are available, or what procedures to follow to make fundamental change. Faculty leaders and administrators interested in redesigning courses and curricula must identify, consult, and reward professors and staff members who are experienced in instructional design and assessment.

Of course, stating the hoped-for outcomes of learning is only one step in improving educational quality. Authentic curricular change requires a demonstrated institutional commitment -- financial resources, active administrative support, and a revamped reward system to encourage extensive faculty involvement. Faculty members must see their efforts as part of broader institutional change and be willing to review the literature on curriculum design and student assessment.

Ultimately, departments' redesign of their curricula must be meshed with institutionwide changes if we are to provide each student with the chance to develop the competencies required. Students need ample opportunity for practice and reinforcement of the various skills throughout their entire undergraduate experience.

While all of this is difficult to accomplish, deep curricular change is possible. It does not require adding an exhaustive list of new courses to the curriculum. Many core competencies can be built into required courses. Writing and speaking assignments, activities involving small groups and problem solving, and the development and use of computer skills are instructional techniques that can be introduced or expanded in almost every course. The sequences of instruction must be carefully orchestrated, however, and pedagogy must change. To learn a problem-solving technique is one thing; to apply it throughout the semester in a political-science or sociology course is a far more effective learning strategy, but one that requires ingenuity on the part of faculty members.

A growing list of resources is available to help us in this process. For example, several publications from the National Center for Education Statistics can help institutions and departments with the difficult task of learning how to evaluate students' progress in the areas of speaking, writing, and critical thinking. In addition, many campuses have established centers with experienced staff members who can help instructors to identify educational goals and strategies for assessing students' progress toward them.

Redesigning the curriculum to emphasize core competencies is undeniably difficult. Those who undertake such a challenge must be willing to put aside long-held beliefs about what a program must include, raise questions that traditionally have been avoided, and test assumptions about what students know and what curricula now achieve. Curricular reform requires faculty members to look outside their disciplines and consider relevant material published by scholars in other fields.

Far-reaching curricular reform may appear overwhelming at first. But until we structure our curricula so that every student has the opportunity to learn and use core skills, and until we can confidently assert that we know how to measure each student's mastery of those skills, we will not give our students the background that they need for life beyond academe.

It is true that as we begin to describe in measurable terms what a college degree should represent, we will be held increasingly accountable for the substance of each graduate's education. But if we do not create our own framework of skills and measurements, then legislators, trustees, and others beyond our walls will not hesitate to impose theirs on us. The time has come for higher education to bite the curriculum bullet.

Last modified: Aug. 12, 1997