Universities can take several approaches in developing what used to be called “core curriculum” or general education—the required college classes that mold young people into educated citizens of the nation and world. Here are three:

A long time ago there was the idea that students should learn what universities for centuries had passed on as important. They should take courses such as Rhetoric, Classic Texts in Political Philosophy, the U.S. Constitution, Western Civilization, Literary Classics of the Western Tradition, etc. All those courses are now being taught at Belmont Abbey College, but you’ll look hard to find them elsewhere.
A more modest approach is to make sure that some basics are provided for students. The American Trustees and Alumni Council (ACTA) has surveyed 700 institutions to see if they require these basic courses: Composition, Literature, Foreign Language, U.S. Government or History, Economics, Mathematics, and Natural or Physical Sciences. Only 22 colleges or universities do.
Finally, there is what happens at most schools today. Essentially, nothing. Following a blistering critique of the general education program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Pope Center has published a study of general education at North Carolina State University. The GenEd program at the land-grant university is only slightly better than UNC-Chapel Hill’s. It follows the same approach as Chapel Hill—students select courses from broad categories, with their choices guided by politically correct themes. Rather than provide “breadth of knowledge,” writes Jay Schalin, such a selection enables student to choose “many courses that are either very narrow, trivial, or both.” How about Music and Social Life? Or Plants in Folklore, Myth and Religion?

Now, that’s a core curriculum.