An Inconvenient Curriculum

Abstract

If colleges and universities are to live up to their responsibility to educate tomorrow's decision makers, they must develop a different, less convenient, curriculum: one that addresses real-world issues. Granted, most universities already have courses dealing with some of these issues; however, these courses often are buried within majors and tend to be upper-division courses that have prerequisites. As a result, students can graduate having completed all of their liberal studies or general education requirements and all of the courses required in their majors and know next to nothing about the world around them. General education requirements must be reconfigured so that they address the global and regional issues to which students will have to respond in their lifetimes. A university curriculum that focuses attention on real-world issues—however inconvenient—is more useful than one that does not.