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Many colleges, in the era of permanent retrenchment, will have to offer a narrower range of courses than in the past. But this does not necessarily mean intellectual deprivation. John Silber, the acerbic and outspoken president of Boston University, complains that he has seen "an increasing number of too small classes and too many courses. We have about 150 courses that study the human mind. But all that we know about the human mind could be taught in 30. A course on the effect of Anna on Sigmund Freud is fine. But it's part of the waste that is commonplace at big research universities. Small colleges cannot afford that kind of narcissism."
So what is the alternative? One answer is offered by Adelphi University, on New York's Long Island, which was on the verge of bankruptcy when Peter Diamandopoulos was named president seven years ago. His strategy: trim fat by linking Adelphi's professional schools, notably in business, social work and nursing, with its undergraduate studies and by introducing an imaginative core curriculum that encompasses ethics as well as arts and sciences. One part of the curriculum deals with "the nature of modernity" and ranges from war and / economic development to breakthroughs in technology.
For better or worse, many experts believe that the battle over what is commonly called multiculturalism is winding down. That is, there is an emerging consensus that every curriculum needs broadening to encompass the cultural experience of women and minorities -- but not at the denigration of D.W.M.s (Dead White Males). Robert Wood, who is Henry Luce professor of Democratic Institutions and the Social Order at Wesleyan University, argues for balance. "In the past five years, we have generally had two counsels on curriculum, and they're both wrong. Allan Bloom ((The Closing of the American Mind)) and others basically say, 'Don't read anything after the Age of the Enlightenment.' Then we have our present multicultural movement saying every culture should be explored. We need some consensus on this. What we should do is concentrate on how to train competent Americans."
And how should colleges do that? Wood has a three-part program. "We've got to teach economics to every student. It conveys a rigor and quantitative skill that all students should understand before they look at political or social institutions. We should require the study of communications, especially visual ones, and not just with some tired old journalist teaching students how the front page is put together. And third, we need to offer real science courses to the non-science student. Most hard scientists tend to belittle non-majors, assuming them to be cognitively inferior. The teachers keep on doing what they're trained to do, expecting the non-majors to sink or swim."