 "Photo: Graphic Illustration by Sam Godwin")
The University of West Florida received a grade of B from the American Council for Trustees and Alumni for requiring that its students take only four out of seven areas of general course work.
ACTA, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., followed the academic catalogs of 170 universities to learn if the schools offered broad courses in the areas of composition, literature, mathematics, natural sciences, economics, foreign language and history. Then, ACTA created a grading scale that rated schools based on their number of required core courses: 6 to 7 is an A; 4 to 5 is a B; 3 is a C; 2 is a D; and 0 to 1 is an F, according to the ACTA Web site.
“ACTA did not base the grades on the quality of the courses that schools offer,” said George Ellenberg, interim vice provost for academic affairs. “They graded schools based on the number of general courses they required students to take.”
According to the ACTA Web site, UWF earned four points for requiring broad courses in composition, literature, math and natural sciences.
“Our students get an excellent, broad-based general education program that has all the elements that they mentioned,” said Thomas Wescott, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “By law, in Florida, our General Studies can only go up to 36 hours.”
Chapter 1007 of the 2009 Florida Statues states in part: “Core curricula for associate in arts programs shall be adopted in rule by the State Board of Education and shall include 36 semester hours of general education courses in the subject areas of communication, mathematics, social sciences, humanities and natural sciences.”
“When students have a broad and good range of knowledge, they are able to be informed citizens and effective workers after they graduate,” ACTA program director David Azzerad said in a phone interview. “We surveyed companies around the nation, and one complaint is that college graduates do not have basic knowledge in arithmetic and writing.”
Ellenberg said the debate is over what kinds of courses are more helpful.
“Which courses are more helpful to students, core courses or general courses?” he asked. “That is the big debate — ACTA wants universities to require more core courses.”
Ellenberg said that core courses are classes that all students would take. The goal of core courses is to insure that students have the general information that everyone should know. Whereas general education focuses on core knowledge — but it focuses more on preparing students for their individual majors, he said.
Specific sciences such as environmental studies, biology, chemistry, geology or physics with labs are considered by the ACTA to be broad and helpful to students, according to the council’s Web site.
“A particular university made it possible for students to obtain a natural science credit by taking Floral Art,” Azzerad said. “Floral Art doesn’t give students the broad range of knowledge they would need in natural science.”
Some school’s administrations and students get upset when they see their grade. However, the grades are not comprehensive assessments of colleges and universities — the grades symbolize the number of vital courses schools require before students graduate, Azzerad said.
Harvard University got a D. Yale University, Cornell University and Vanderbilt University were among the schools that got a grade of F from the ACTA.
“This scoring system is inconsistent with the national reputation of schools,” Wescott said. “Some of the excellent schools in the nation are failing this thing.”
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