Expanding the Context of Curricular Reform

Abstract

recent and widely publicized reports focus on alleged inadequacies in undergraduate education. These are not the only recent reports on academe. Others consider declining minority enrollment, declining faculty compensation and professional opportunities, and declining funding for research and research equipment, as well as increasing corporate educational needs, increasing corporatesponsored training, and increasing adult and continuing education. Many additional concerns press upon us. Federal educational funding is under attack, not only in the appropriation process but also in the legislative reauthorization of basic federal programs for higher education and in proposals for tax reform. International and regional competition have heightened awareness of the need for scientific research and training. Social inequities of income and educational opportunity are increasing and increasingly noted. Yet, despite the urgency of these issues, national attention has been drawn principally to the quality of undergraduate curricula and instruction. Does this mean that the inadequacies of undergraduate instruction are the most severe problems confronting universities and colleges? Clark Kerr so argued when he prefaced the renewed emphasis on undergraduate education in a speech to the Association of Colleges (AAC) early in 1984 in which he observed that: American higher education has been excellent in most respects; however, in the area of liberal learning there are great deficits, as there are in the teaching of basic skills.1 Thus faculty are damned with great praisedamned because his comment glosses over our many problems while criticizing us in our area of greatest public responsibility. Clark Kerr evades direct accusation of faculty by attributing opinions to the many: There are many in academe who feel it is the professors, who have fomented a 'subversion of liberal learn-