Sometime in the next two weeks, some four million Americans are in for a big surprise. Maybe an ugly one. Because that’s how many high school graduates will be arriving on campus for the first semester, freshman year—and too many of them are liable to be unhappy with what they find. As parents unpack the last few milk-crates and drive away, these bright-eyed 17 and 18 year-olds will look to the universities and colleges they have chosen for perhaps the first serious intellectual experience of their lives—and be disappointed. How do I know this? Because they’ve told me—and the other writers who work with me on Choosing the Right College, the standard college guide for parents and students seeking a traditional liberal arts education. Each year, we reluctantly compile anecdotes of what can only be called “student abuse,” and provide them as part of detailed analyses of more than 130 leading American schools.

As they experience freshman (or more correctly “first-year”) orientation, tens of thousands of students too young to drink will be subjected in the next two weeks to elaborate “workshops” on ethnic and sexual issues—which amount in many cases to training sessions in America-bashing, post-modern groupthink, and “safe” sexual license. The sophomores and junior who conduct these seminars, parroting the pamphlets they’ve been handed by administrators, will serve up the same stale gruel which students have been complaining (discreetly, to us) about for over a decade. The corrosively anti-Western mindset that is multiculturalism will be conflated with genuine tolerance and cosmopolitan respect for racial and cultural differences. Religious mores that prescribe self-restraint will be ridiculed, more or less subtly. And yes, condoms will be unrolled, on bananas, cucumbers, and other less delicate devices, at campuses across America. It’s all old news, and we’re frankly a little tired of talking about it. But to each new crop of freshmen which experiences freshman indoctrination week, which sees its sensibilities and beliefs assaulted, and withers under the peer pressure to conform, the outrages are fresh and vivid. Each incident really is a scandal—in the biblical sense, an assault on innocence.

As they leave their dorms and enroll in their first few classes, these students will encounter a different problem. If orientation week seems driven by a narrow, tightly disciplined ideology, the curriculum at most schools is a sloppy, “consumer”-driven mess. With a few honorable exceptions—and by “few” we mean something like “ten”—colleges in the U.S. have simply shrugged off their duty to produce well-rounded, broadly educated citizens. The once-venerable “core” curricula—created by idealistic, genuinely liberal educators who wished to democratize higher learning and offer the masses the riches once reserved to the elite—have been tossed aside. Not just at Podunk State A&M. At Harvard and Yale.

Some schools—including one residually Ivy League university—simply impose no requirements at all. Show up, pay your tuition (no compromises there!) and pile up your plate with courses chosen from a Shoney’s breakfast bar—make it all bacon if you want, it doesn’t matter. Hang around for four years, and you get a degree. And don’t expect any grades below a “C”—they simply aren’t recorded.

At most other schools, a minimal set of “distributional requirements” ensures that you emerge with a least an inkling of a sprinkling of fields outside your major. A dash of sociology here; a course in the history of someplace, anyplace, there; some “physics for poets” course (copy the answers from smart immigrants down the hall). Add this to a thick serving of classes you’ve chosen all by yourself, based on the vague, unformed notions you gleaned at your mediocre high school. All this will guide your choice of major, specialty, and the profession you will pursue for the rest of your life. College, which not so long ago was seen as a formative experience, has become a four-year trip to an intellectual WalMart. The school provides little more than the cash register and the cart.

This leaves aside the problem—well documented in our college profiles, and by campus activists—of political bias in the classroom, courses designed to promote a political point of view, and professors who grade down dissenting students. These abuses, which formed the staple of the “political correctness” debate throughout the 90s, persist on most campuses we’ve surveyed.

However, there are certain positive trends we’d like to report. Stay tuned: We’ve saved the good news for Part II of this column.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: John Zmirak,

I thought that political correctness was dying on America's university campuses. While it sounds like it is still raging strong, what you mention about the dumbing down of curriculum and the absence of any core seems to be the realization of our (conservatives) worst fears. Now students just won't be able to think, whether the influence is their professors or not. Organizations like your's were the perfect antidote to the 90s pc movement, but can these same groups take on the university to successfully reinstate a "traditional" core? Or is the focus on the public outside the university and the vehicle the ISI guide to force reform much in the same way the pc battles were waged?

Great article.

I think that apart from setting up new schools such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Christendom--to give just two examples--and fighting to defend older ones not yet corrupted, the real answer is to use consumerism against itself. Persuade students and parents to make the right choices, creating their own core curricula. That's perhaps the greatest service our college guide offers--a comprehensive manual for picking the serious classes at each school.

I would like to offer a little bit of hope and a question from you if you have read the college guide. The school I attend, Illinois College, prides itself on being a liberal arts institution. In its latest gen. ed. requirements, students must take the following:

a Natural Science w/ lab
a Physical Science w/ lab
Quantitative and Symbolic Reasoning (math type classes)
two semesters of foreign lang.
Oral Communication
Writing
two Humanities classes
two Social Science classes
a Fine Arts class
one class from each of the following:
Religious and Philosophical Issues
Civic Issues and Responsibility
Global Issues and Cultural Awareness

One drawback with this new requirement versus what was in use when I started is that you can go through without taking any religion classes or lit. classes, where as on the old catalog you were required to take two of each. I am curious though if Illinois College is mentioned in the guide and if so what is said about it.

As far as liberal arts goes, my alma mater required a fairly broad range of classes in order to graduate, regardless of your major. Granted, it was a private Christian university, but it still required far more "core" classes than numerous other schools I looked at.

The core (excluding Bible classes) included, for a typical BA/BS:
7 Science Hours (1 Physical Science, 1 Life Science, with 1 lab in either of the two)
12 English Hours (2 Comp classes/ 2 Lit classes)
6 History Hours (Western Civ and US History)
3 Social Science Hours (Sociology, Psychology)
Theatre/Music/Art Appreciation (3 hours)
Speech
Mathematics
Lifetime Fitness (PE + Health)
Computer Applications
Marriage and Family Relations

The school also required 12 hours of Bible as part of the core. I felt that those requirements helped to create a fairly well-rounded student and several faculty members were (and still are) trying to actually add classes to the core such as additional humanities requirements and a Socratic Logic class (which I took and enjoyed thoroughly).

I'm saddened to know that many universities are doing away with the idea of "Core" classes, but with rampant consumerism and relativity, it's not surprising that these classes aren't required. Why teach ethics or humanities if those "old fashioned" ideas are irrelevent to modern society? Why teach history if it's simply anglo-centric and full of dead white guys who oppressed and killed in the name of "god" or the church? Why teach speech when language is irrelevent and AIM is the only way to communicate? Why teach writing when online acronyms and e-mails allow fast and easy communication without thought? Is it really any surprise that even "elite" schools are ceasing to truly educate? Excellent article and analysis, even if the subject matter is disturbing.

Side Note: For those interested, I attended Faulkner University (not the public Faulkner State) in Montgomery, AL.