For all that college money we aren’t getting much

Think you are getting your money’s worth with our heavily funded colleges and universities? Think again. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, ACTA, released the results of “What Will They Learn? 2017-18” and the results are not encouraging.

“The group evaluated more than 1,100 colleges and universities based on their requirements in seven “key areas of knowledge”: composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. history, economics, mathematics and science. The results showed that 66.5 percent of the schools required only three or fewer of those subjects.

“This leads to a “thin and patchy education,” the report states. “Students may have dozens or even hundreds of courses from which to choose, many of them highly specialized niche courses,” it states. “Once distribution requirements become too loose, students almost inevitably graduate with an odd list of random, unconnected courses and, all too often, serious gaps in their basic skills and knowledge.”

“Additional key findings include that fewer than 18 percent of colleges and universities require a foundational course in U.S. government or history, and only about 3 percent of the institutions require students to take a basic economics class,” according to Sophia Buono of Notre Dame who reported on the survey for thecollegefix.com.

We can build athletic and entertainment venues to rival any in the world but, we can’t seem to actually provide an education for most that even beings to represent the term “higher” in higher education. But of course the solution to this and all problems, even when it is not the solution, is to pour more and more money into failing systems without demanding reform and results.