Florida’s higher education reforms under Governor Ron DeSantis have drawn criticism from the current education establishment: tweeting professors, scholarly guilds, the American Association of University Professors, and the mainstream press . But a closer look at Florida’s general education overhauls reveals why such reforms are sorely needed.

Most college curricula were prescribed until the elective system developed in the late 1800s. However, with the rise of electives, new problems arose: college curricula lacked consistency and students were poorly prepared for higher-level courses.

It is from the need for consistency that the current educational system was born, where students have major areas of study, take general education courses, and choose from elective courses. The new model combined, as Frederick Rudolph reports in his essential book Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Curriculum Since 1636“the best of the ancient Anglo-American university with the best of the modern German university”. General education was a way to preserve a broad liberal arts education, while specializations allowed for in-depth specialized education.

Complaints about this system are contemporary with the system. From the beginning, people have wondered what counts as “general education,” how broad general education should be, and what specializations should be on campus. Overall, the number of general education course requirements has decreased (by 55 percent of total credits for graduation in 1914 to 33 percent of the total in 1993), while the number of classes meeting these requirements has increased. Today, the University of Florida has around 500 lessons in its general education program, Florida State University around 900.

Like historian Steven Mintz wrotegeneral education today is “an assortment of disconnected disciplinary courses that do little to ensure that undergraduates learn the fundamental skills of communication, analysis, and critical thinking, as well as the expected cultural knowledge of a university graduate. As the number of courses meeting various general education requirements increases, education resembles the elective system that our current system was intended to replace. No consistency, no integrity. Disappearance of general or common content.

University committees are often reluctant to provide coherence to general education. Participation in general education is a matter of life and death for many academic departments. Departments and majors want to engage with the general education program to recruit students into their majors and expand their resources. Students sitting down are key to maintaining budgets. Representatives from one department are unwilling to say no to requests from other departments, for fear that their future requests will be judged with skepticism. Rarely are applications for entry into general education refused. The result is a tendency for university boards of studies to offer an ever-increasing number of general education courses.

Florida school administrators and boards are tackling the problem. They seek to disqualify general education courses based on identity politics and ensuring that others provide “extensive fundamental knowledge”, not specialized or experimental approaches better suited to upper-division courses.

A lot courses are now removed from general education As part of state curriculum reform, there are upper division courses that are not, by definition, basic general education. At Florida International UniversityFor example, the anthropology of race and ethnicity was removed from the general education curriculum, likely because the subject is geared toward a higher division level and because course syllabi were steeped in identity politics. The fundamental investigations of American history remain, while the history of women in the United States has disappeared. Sociology of Gender and Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies have also disappeared from general education, both having upper-division meanings. It appears that the desire to offer more courses on identity politics in departments struggling to gain enrollment is prompting curriculum committees to include more courses in general education.

There is a Chesterton fence in general education reform. Some departments have many general education courses due to the needs of other programs of study. UF Department of Chemistry Aptly, it has 11 lower division general education classes (including two chemistry classes for engineers and another for honors program students).

Other departments are expanding their general education offerings to survive. The UF Department of Anthropology has 17 courses in general education, including race and racism and the Incas and their ancestors. Interesting, perhaps, but hardly fundamental. Things Your Doctor Never Told You: Introduction to Medical Anthropology and Indigenous Values ​​have lower-level designations but also seem far from foundational. FSU Anthropology also 20 neither course is core.

The FSU Religious Department has 40 lessons in general education (excluding those designated as meeting the state-mandated writing requirement). Hinduism is taught in the Introduction to South Asian Religions course, but the department also offers Goddesses, Women, and Power in Hinduism as a general education core course, which which is hardly a basic course. FSU’s general education history offerings are also broad and include specialized courses like the Spanish Civil War, Weimar, and Nazi Germany.

Studies in American history and literature, available at most universities, meet the “broad fundamental knowledge” criteria of Florida law, as does the inclusion of American government courses. African American history or literature, however, seems more suited to the upper classes because it is specialized, not foundational, informed by identity politics and not an appreciation of our constitutional republic.

Florida politicians have a duty to make sense of the state’s overall education. Universities left to their own devices allow general education to expand beyond all reason, thus compromising the purpose of education. To remedy this, Florida made general education compulsory in Florida create “an informed citizen” who will “promote and preserve the constitutional republic through traditional, historically accurate” and “fundamental” courses. Florida lawmakers are working to bring consistency and purpose to general education, something universities often don’t do.