College Learning For The New Global Century

1818 R Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009
Copyright © 2007 by the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-0-9779210-4-1
The complete text of the LEAP report is available online at www.aacu.org. To order print
copies, or to learn about other AAC&U publications, visit www.aacu.org, e-mail pub_desk@aacu.org,
or call 202.387.3760.
Published with support from the Christian Johnson Endeavor Foundation, the Charles Engelhard Foundation,
Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Johnson Foundation, AT&T Founda-
tion, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and numerous individual donors. The opinions expressed in this report
are those of the authors and do not necessarily reﬂect those of the funders.

Derek Bok, Interim President, Harvard
Azar Naﬁsi, Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy
University
Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Myles Brand, President, National Collegiate
Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund
Athletic Association
Distinguished Service Professor of Law
and Ethics, University of Chicago
Mary Sue Coleman, President, University
of Michigan
Peggy O’Brien (Cochair), Senior Vice
President, Educational Programming,
Ronald A. Crutcher (Cochair), President,
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Wheaton College (MA)
James F. Orr III, Chair, Board of Trustees, the
Troy Duster, Director, Institute for the
Rockefeller Foundation
History of the Production of Knowledge, New
York University; Chancellor’s Professor of
Keith J. Peden, Senior Vice President of
Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Human Resources, Raytheon Company
Judith Eaton, President, Council for Higher
Christi M. Pedra, Chief Executive Ofﬁcer,
Education Accreditation
Siemens Hearing Instruments
James Gentile, President, Research
Chellie Pingree, President, Common Cause
Corporation
Sally E. Pingree, Trustee, Charles Engelhard
Gina Glantz, Senior Adviser to the President,
Foundation
Service Employees International Union
Carol Geary Schneider, President, Associa-
Freeman A. Hrabowski III, President,
tion of American Colleges and Universities
University of Maryland Baltimore County
Wendy Sherman, Principal, The Albright
Sylvia Hurtado, Director, Higher
Group, LLC
Education Research Institute, University of
Lee S. Shulman, President, the Carnegie
California, Los Angeles
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Wayne C. Johnson, Vice President of
Donald M. Stewart, Visiting Professor,
University Relations Worldwide, Hewlett-
University of Chicago; Former President, the
Packard Company
College Board and Spelman College
Roberts Jones, President, Education
Deborah Traskell, Senior Vice President,
Workforce Policy, LLC
State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance
H. Peter Karoff, Founder and Chairman,
Company
The Philanthropic Initiative
Stephen H. Weiss, Managing Director,
George D. Kuh, Chancellor’s Professor
Neuberger Berman, Inc.
and Director, Indiana University Center for
Blenda J. Wilson, President and Chief
Postsecondary Research
Executive Ofﬁcer, Nellie Mae Education
Barbara Lawton, Lieutenant Governor, State
Foundation
of Wisconsin
Jack M. Wilson, President, University of
Stephen Mittelstet, President, Richland
Massachusetts System
College, Dallas County Community
Ruth Wooden, President, Public Agenda
College District

—W. E. B. DuBois

FOREWORD ..................................................................................................................... vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................... ix
EXECUTIVE HIGHLIGHTS ............................................................................................... 1
INTRODUCTION: A Dangerous Silence ......................................................................... 7
PART 1: What Matters in College? ................................................................................. 11
The Essential Learning Outcomes ......................................................................... 12
Liberal Education and American Capability........................................................... 13
PART 2: From the American Century to the Global Century....................................... 15
Narrow Learning Is Not Enough .......................................................................... 15
The World Is Changing and Liberal Education Must Change Too ......................... 17
Engaging Twenty-First-Century Realities.............................................................. 19
Key Questions to Guide School–College Planning................................................ 20
Fulﬁlling the Promise of College in the Twenty-ﬁrst Century................................ 23
PART 3: A New Framework for Excellence.................................................................... 25
The Principles of Excellence ................................................................................. 26
1. Aim High—and Make Excellence Inclusive ....................................................... 27
2. Give Students a Compass................................................................................... 29
3. Teach the Arts of Inquiry and Innovation ........................................................... 30
4. Engage the Big Questions.................................................................................. 33
5. Connect Knowledge with Choices and Action .................................................. 35
6. Foster Civic, Intercultural, and Ethical Learning ................................................. 37
7. Assess Students’ Ability to Apply Learning to Complex Problems ....................... 40
PART 4: A Time for Leadership and Action...................................................................... 45
What It Will Take.................................................................................................. 46
Liberal Education and America’s Promise .............................................................. 50
APPENDIX A: A Guide to Effective Educational Practices .......................................... 53
APPENDIX B: A Note on Commercial Colleges ............................................................ 55
NOTES ............................................................................................................................... 57

In 2005, on the occasion of its ninetieth anniversary, the Association of American Colleges and
Universities (AAC&U) launched a decade-long initiative, Liberal Education and America’s
Promise (LEAP): Excellence for Everyone as a Nation Goes to College. AAC&U represents
over 1,100 colleges and universities of every type and size: large and small, public and private,
research and master’s universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and state systems. It is
the only major higher education association whose sole focus is the quality of student learning
in the college years.
AAC&U launched the LEAP initiative because the academy stands at a crossroads. Millions
of students today seek a college education, and record numbers are actually enrolling. Without
a serious national effort to recalibrate college learning to the needs of the new global century,
however, too few of these students will reap the full beneﬁts of college.
College Learning for the New Global Century, published through the LEAP initiative, spells out
the essential aims, learning outcomes, and guiding principles for a twenty-ﬁrst-century college
education. It reports on the promises American society needs to make—and keep—to all who
seek a college education and to the society that will depend on graduates’ future leadership and
capabilities.
The LEAP National Leadership Council comprises educational, business, community,
and policy leaders who are strong advocates for educational excellence and change in higher
education. These leaders have come together to recommend the essential learning outcomes
described in this report because of their own belief in the power of liberal education and its
importance in meeting the challenges of the new global century. But they have also been insistent
that liberal education cannot be restricted, as it has been in the past, mainly to colleges of arts and
sciences, or to the general education courses that most students take in addition to courses in their
majors. The essential learning outcomes described in this report apply to the professional and
occupational majors as well as the more traditional settings for liberal and liberal arts education.
Each member of the council has already been a vigorous advocate both for educational
excellence and for far-reaching change in the way college learning is designed and implemented.
Each brought his or her own insight and expertise to the table as this report was being pre-
pared. On behalf of the entire higher education community, we thank them for their wisdom,
commitment, and practical advice.
The LEAP report also builds on the work of educators at AAC&U’s member campuses and
especially those involved since 2000 in AAC&U’s Greater Expectations initiative. Through that
earlier initiative, AAC&U organized a wide-ranging collaboration with colleges and universities
already signiﬁcantly involved in educational renewal and with many other educational organi-
zations, accrediting groups, state policy makers, higher education executive ofﬁcers, P–16
leaders, and business and civic leaders. The recommendations in this report are informed and
grounded by the many promising examples of educational change identiﬁed through these

collaborations.
The LEAP Initiative: 2007 and Beyond
The LEAP initiative will continue at least through 2015, the occasion of AAC&U’s centennial
anniversary. Four discrete but intersecting lines of activity have already been launched. A LEAP
Campus Action Network now includes over 150 colleges and universities, as well as numerous
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

partner organizations that are working, in ways appropriate to their mission, to achieve a more
empowering liberal education for all today’s college students.
LEAP also is working in partnership with leaders in several states, connecting the learning
outcomes recommended in this LEAP report with educational priorities for student achievement
in those states. In addition, LEAP is both disseminating evidence about student learning outcomes
to colleges and universities and providing assistance to colleges and universities about ways to use
assessment to deepen student learning.
Finally, LEAP will continue to work, with the National Leadership Council and with AAC&U
member presidents across the United States, to champion the value and importance of a twenty-
ﬁrst-century liberal education for all college students.
The United States is faced today with an unprecedented opportunity to provide far more
students than ever before with the kind of life-enhancing, liberal—and liberating—education that
once was available only to a fortunate few. This nation’s future depends on our ability to fulﬁll the
promise of education for all our citizens. In today’s knowledge-fueled world, ensuring the most
empowering forms of learning for all students should be our top educational priority.
Ronald A. Crutcher
Robert Corrigan
President, Wheaton College (MA)
President, San Francisco State University
Cochair, National Leadership Council for
Chair, Board of Directors of the Association
Liberal Education and America’s Promise
of American Colleges and Universities
Peggy O’Brien
Carol Geary Schneider
President, Educational Programming,
President, Association of American Colleges
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
and Universities
Cochair, National Leadership Council for
Liberal Education and America’s Promise
AAC&U | Foreword

This report is the culmination of more than a year of sustained and collective work
by the LEAP National Leadership Council, AAC&U staff members, and numerous
advisers throughout the United States. We are especially appreciative of the time and
effort council members devoted to the development of this report. Their expertise, wisdom,
and commitment were essential in shaping an analysis that reﬂects the perspectives of educators,
employers, and philanthropic and civic leaders.
The LEAP initiative was made possible through a major grant from the Christian Johnson
Endeavor Foundation and through complementary funding from many other sources, including
the Charles Engelhard Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, the Johnson Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Virginia Foundation for the Humani-
ties, and numerous individual donors. Particular thanks go to our partners in the several founda-
tions, including Julie J. Kidd, Sally E. Pingree, Daniel F. Fallon, Eugene Tobin, Boyd Gibbons,
Carol Johnson, and Robert Vaughan. Their interest and active support have been invaluable. We
also thank the many colleges, universities, and partner organizations that have joined us in shaping
the LEAP initiative as members of the LEAP Campus Action Network.
Numerous other advisers contributed in signiﬁcant ways both to this report and to the LEAP
initiative. Donald Harward, former president of Bates College and senior fellow at AAC&U,
helped spark the entire effort. Special thanks also are due to Ronald Calgaard, W. Robert Connor,
Richard Hersh, Stanley Katz, Rebecca Karoff, Lee Knefelkamp, Kevin Reilly, Cora Marrett, Dale
Marshall, Richard Morrill, John Nichols, David Paris, Gregory Prince, Robert Shoenberg, and
the late Edgar F. Beckham. The AAC&U Board of Directors played a key role both in framing the
initiative and in supporting its revisionist views of liberal education. John Casteen, a past member
of the AAC&U Board of Directors, also gave active support at crucial points.
Carol Geary Schneider, president of AAC&U and a member of the LEAP National Leadership
Council, translated the insights of council members and many other advisers into the analysis and
recommendations included in the report. Bethany Zecher Sutton, Ross Miller, Nicole DeMarco,
Ursula Gross, and Gretchen Sauvey provided invaluable assistance with research and in coordinat-
ing and recording the work of the council. AAC&U Vice Presidents Alma Clayton-Pedersen,
Terrel L. Rhodes, and Caryn McTighe Musil contributed insights and editorial assistance.
Members of the AAC&U Ofﬁce of Communications and Public Affairs and President’s
Ofﬁce brought their expertise to the preparation of the report for publication. Special thanks go
to Debra Humphreys, Shelley Johnson Carey, Michael Ferguson, and Darbi Bossman for their
tireless assistance in planning, editing, design, and production. David Tritelli was the ideal editor,
working with dedication to shape the concepts as well as the language. Numerous additional
readers reviewed earlier drafts of this report and provided invaluable feedback.
Finally, LEAP builds from AAC&U’s earlier initiative, Greater Expectations: The
Commitment to Quality as a Nation Goes to College. We gratefully acknowledge the thousands
of campus leaders who contributed to that work, and especially its key leaders: Andrea Leskes,
now president of the Institute for American Universities, and Judith Ramaley, now president of
Winona State University.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U ix

College Learning for the New Global Century is a report about
the aims and outcomes of a twenty-ﬁrst-century college
education. It is also a report about the promises we need
to make—and keep—to all students who aspire to a college education,
especially to those for whom college is a route, perhaps the only
possible route, to a better future.
With college education more important than ever before, both to
individual opportunity and to American prosperity, policy attention
has turned to a new set of priorities: the expansion of access, the
reduction of costs, and accountability for student success.
These issues are important, but something equally important has
been left off the table.
Across all the discussion of access, affordability, and even account-
ability, there has been a near-total public and policy silence about what
contemporary college graduates need to know and be able to do.
This report ﬁlls that void. It builds from the recognition, already
widely shared, that in a demanding economic and international envi-
ronment, Americans will need further learning beyond high school.
The National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and
America’s Promise believes that the policy commitment to expanded
college access must be anchored in an equally strong commitment to
educational excellence. Student success in college cannot be docu-
mented—as it usually is—only in terms of enrollment, persistence,
and degree attainment. These widely used metrics, while important,
miss entirely the question of whether students who have placed their
hopes for the future in higher education are actually achieving the
kind of learning they need for a complex and volatile world.
In the twenty-ﬁrst century, the world itself is setting very high
expectations for knowledge and skill. This report—based on extensive
input both from educators and employers—responds to these new
global challenges. It describes the learning contemporary students
need from college, and what it will take to help them achieve it.
Preparing Students for Twenty-First-Century Realities
In recent years, the ground has shifted for Americans in virtually every
important sphere of life—economic, global, cross-cultural, environ-
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

mental, civic. The world is being dramatically reshaped by scientiﬁc
and technological innovations, global interdependence, cross-cultural
encounters, and changes in the balance of economic and political
power.
These waves of dislocating change will only intensify. The context
in which today’s students will make choices and compose lives is one
of disruption rather than certainty, and of interdependence rather than
insularity. This volatility also applies to careers. Studies show that Ameri-
cans already change jobs ten times in the two decades after they turn
eighteen, with such change even more frequent for younger workers.
Taking stock of these developments, educators and employers have
begun to reach similar conclusions—an emerging consensus—about
the kinds of learning Americans need from college. The recommen-
dations in this report are informed by the views of employers, by new
standards in a number of the professions, and by a multiyear dialogue
with hundreds of colleges, community colleges, and universities about
the aims and best practices for a twenty-ﬁrst-century education.
The goal of this report is to move from off-camera analysis to
public priorities and action.
What Matters in College?
American college students already know that they want a degree.
The challenge is to help students become highly intentional about
the forms of learning and accomplishment that the degree should
represent.
The LEAP National Leadership Council calls on American society
to give new priority to a set of educational outcomes that all students
need from higher learning, outcomes that are closely calibrated with
the challenges of a complex and volatile world.
Keyed to work, life, and citizenship, the essential learning outcomes
recommended in this report are important for all students and should
be fostered and developed across the entire educational experience,
and in the context of students’ major ﬁelds. They provide a new
framework to guide students’ cumulative progress—as well as curricular
alignment—from school through college.
The LEAP National Leadership Council does not call for a “one-
size-ﬁts-all” curriculum. The recommended learning outcomes can
and should be achieved through many different programs of study and
in all collegiate institutions, including colleges, community colleges
and technical institutes, and universities, both public and private.
AAC&U | Executive Highlights

THE ESSENTIAL LEARNING OUTCOMES
Beginning in school, and continuing at successively higher levels across
their college studies, students should prepare for twenty-ﬁrst-century
challenges by gaining:
KNOWLEDGE OF HUMAN CULTURES AND THE PHYSICAL AND NATURAL WORLD
• Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences,
humanities, histories, languages, and the arts
by engagement with big questions, both contemporary
and enduring
INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL SKILLS, INCLUDING
• Inquiry and analysis
• Critical and creative thinking
• Written and oral communication
• Quantitative literacy
• Information literacy
• Teamwork and problem solving
extensively, across the curriculum, in the context of
progressively more challenging problems, projects, and standards
for performance
PERSONAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, INCLUDING
• Civic knowledge and engagement—local and global
• Intercultural knowledge and competence
• Ethical reasoning and action
• Foundations and skills for lifelong learning
through active involvement with diverse communities and
real-world challenges
INTEGRATIVE LEARNING, INCLUDING
• Synthesis and advanced accomplishment across general and
specialized studies
through the application of knowledge, skills, and
responsibilities to new settings and complex problems
Liberal Education and American Capability
Reﬂecting the traditions of American higher education since the
founding, the term “liberal education” headlines the kinds of learning
needed for a free society and for the full development of human talent.
Liberal education has always been this nation’s signature educational
tradition, and this report builds on its core values: expanding horizons,
building understanding of the wider world, honing analytical and
communication skills, and fostering responsibilities beyond self.
However, in a deliberate break with the academic categories
developed in the twentieth century, the LEAP National Leadership
Council disputes the idea that liberal education is achieved only through
studies in arts and sciences disciplines. It also challenges the conven-
tional view that liberal education is, by deﬁnition, “nonvocational.”
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

The council deﬁnes liberal education for the twenty-ﬁrst century
as a comprehensive set of aims and outcomes that are essential for all
students because they are important to all ﬁelds of endeavor. Today, in
an economy that is dependent on innovation and global savvy, these
outcomes have become the keys to economic vitality and individual
opportunity. They are the foundations for American success in all
ﬁelds—from technology and the sciences to communications and the
creative arts.
The LEAP National Leadership Council recommends, therefore,
that the essential aims and outcomes be emphasized across every ﬁeld
of college study, whether the ﬁeld is conventionally considered one
of the arts and sciences disciplines or whether it is one of the profes-
sional and technical ﬁelds (business, engineering, education, health,
the performing arts, etc.) in which the majority of college students
currently major. General education plays a role, but it is not possible to
squeeze all these important aims into the general education program
alone. The majors must address them as well.
A New Framework for Excellence
The LEAP National Leadership Council recommends, in sum, an
education that intentionally fosters, across multiple ﬁelds of study,
wide-ranging knowledge of science, cultures, and society; high-level
intellectual and practical skills; an active commitment to personal and
social responsibility; and the demonstrated ability to apply learning to
complex problems and challenges.
The council further calls on educators to help students become
“intentional learners” who focus, across ascending levels of study
and diverse academic programs, on achieving the essential learning
outcomes. But to help students do this, educational communities will
also have to become far more intentional themselves—both about
the kinds of learning students need, and about effective educational
practices that help students learn to integrate and apply their learning.
In a society as diverse as the United States, there can be no “one-
size-ﬁts-all” design for learning that serves all students and all areas
of study. The diversity that characterizes American higher education
remains a source of vitality and strength.
Yet all educational institutions and all ﬁelds of study also share in a
common obligation to prepare their graduates as fully as possible for
the real-world demands of work, citizenship, and life in a complex and
fast-changing society. In this context, there is great value in a broadly
deﬁned educational framework that provides both a shared sense of
the aims of education and strong emphasis on effective practices that
help students achieve these aims.
To highlight these shared responsibilities, the council urges a new
compact, between educators and American society, to adopt and
achieve new Principles of Excellence (see p. 26).
Informed by a generation of innovation and by scholarly research
on effective practices in teaching, learning, and curriculum, the
Principles of Excellence offer both challenging standards and ﬂexible
guidance for an era of educational reform and renewal.
AAC&U | Executive Highlights

Taken together, the Principles of Excellence underscore the need
to teach students how to integrate and apply their learning—across
multiple levels of schooling and across disparate ﬁelds of study. The
principles call for a far-reaching shift in the focus of schooling from
accumulating course credits to building real-world capabilities.
A Time for Leadership and Action
The Principles of Excellence build from a generation of innovation that
is already well under way. As higher education has reached out to serve
an ever wider and more diverse set of students, there has been wide-
spread experimentation to develop more effective educational practices
and to determine “what works” with today’s college students.
Some of these innovations are so well established that research
is already emerging about their effectiveness. This report provides a
guide to tested and effective educational practices (see appendix A).
To date, however, these active and engaged forms of learning have
served only a fraction of students. New research suggests that the
beneﬁts are especially signiﬁcant for students who start farther behind.
But often, these students are not the ones actually participating in the
high-impact practices.
With campus experimentation already well advanced—on every
one of the Principles of Excellence—it is time to move from “pilot
efforts” to more comprehensive commitments. The United States
comprehensively transformed its designs for learning, at all levels, in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Now, as we enter
the new global century, Americans need to mobilize again to advance
a contemporary set of goals, guiding principles, and practices that will
prepare all college students—not just the fortunate few—for twenty-
ﬁrst-century realities.
What will it take?
As a community, we should
• make the essential learning outcomes and the Principles of
Excellence priorities on campus;
• form coalitions, across sectors, to advance all students’ long-
term interests;
• build principled and determined leadership, including

• high-proﬁle advocacy from presidents, trustees, school
leaders, and employers

• curricular leadership from knowledgeable scholars and
teachers

• policy leadership at multiple levels to support and reward a
new framework for educational excellence;
• put employers in direct dialogue with students;
• reclaim the connections between liberal education and
democratic freedom.
While recognized leaders can make higher achievement a priority,
faculty and teachers who work directly with students are the only
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

ones who can make it actually happen. At all levels—nationally,
regionally, and locally—they will need to take the lead in develop-
ing guidelines, curricula, and assignments that connect rich content
with students’ progressive mastery of essential skills and capabilities.
Equally important, those responsible for educating future teachers and
future faculty must work to ensure that they are well prepared to help
students achieve the intended learning.
Liberal Education and America’s Promise
With this report, the LEAP National Leadership Council urges
a comprehensive commitment, not just to prepare all students for
college, but to provide the most powerful forms of learning for all
who enroll in college.
Working together, with determination, creativity, and a larger sense
of purpose, Americans can fulﬁll the promise of a liberating college
education—for every student and for America’s future.
AAC&U | Executive Highlights

This is a pivotal moment for higher education, a time when
we must work together for the kind of learning graduates
need for an interdependent and volatile world. And it is also
a precarious moment when short-sighted educational choices may
prove permanently limiting to Americans’ prospects.
Americans have long placed great value on higher education, but for
most of our history, a college education was a privilege reserved only for
the few. Today, that situation has changed fundamentally. Far-reaching
global, economic, and technological developments have converged to
make postsecondary learning an imperative for almost everyone. Both
this country’s future economic growth and individual opportunity are
now closely tied to the attainment of high levels of knowledge and skill,
and to the ability to continue learning over a lifetime.
Responding to this new environment, 75 percent of high school
graduates already are enrolling in college within two years of gradua-
tion;1 67 percent of students matriculate immediately after completing
high school.2 An even higher number—94 percent of current high
school students—say they want to attend college after high school.3
Policy leaders also are responding. Reading the numbers, they see
the jarring disconnect between aspiration and actual achievement. Of
students who begin high school at age fourteen, fewer than three in
ten will hold a baccalaureate degree twelve years later, while one in
ﬁve will still not have ﬁnished high school.4 At the same time, both
college enrollment and degree attainment remain stubbornly stratiﬁed
by income and race.5 And so there is new pressure to expand college
access, especially for those from low-income backgrounds; strengthen
college preparation for all students; make higher education more
affordable; and increase graduation rates. In 2005, the federal govern-
ment gave added impetus to these policy priorities by forming the
Commission on the Future of Higher Education and charging it to
propose new directions for access, affordability, and accountability.6
Stunningly, however, American society has yet to confront the
most basic and far-reaching question of all. Across all the work
on access, readiness, costs, and even accountability, there has been a
near-total public silence about what contemporary college graduates
need to know and be able to do.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

Yet off the public radar screen, evidence is mounting that Ameri-
FIGURE 1
cans can no longer afford to ignore these questions (see ﬁg. 1).
FINDINGS ON SELECTED LIBERAL
Former Harvard University President Derek Bok has summarized
EDUCATION OUTCOMES
a wealth of separate studies on student learning in his 2006 book, Our
Underachieving Colleges.7 As he reports, college students are underper-
• Eight percent of college seniors
forming in virtually every area of academic endeavor, from essential
are “proﬁcient” at level 3 math, up
intellectual skills such as critical thinking, writing, and quantitative
from 5 percent of freshmen
reasoning to public purposes such as civic engagement and ethical
• Eleven percent of college seniors
learning. Other research concludes that less than 10 percent of today’s
are “proﬁcient” at level 3 writing
college graduates have the knowledge and experience to make them
globally prepared.8 Conﬁrming this portrait of underachievement, less
• Six percent of college seniors are
than 25 percent of human resource professionals report that the recent
“proﬁcient” in critical thinking,
college graduates they employ are well prepared for the workforce.9
77 percent are “not proﬁcient”
Genuinely alarmed by their own international scanning, business
• Less than 13 percent of college
leaders have added another compelling layer of critique. In one urgent
students achieve basic compe-
report after another,10 they warn about Americans’ dangerous loss of
tence in a language other than
comparative advantage in the so-called STEM disciplines: science,
English
technology, engineering, and mathematics (see ﬁg. 2). And this, they
• Less than 34 percent of college
point out, will inevitably mean a loss of economic advantage as well.
students earn credit for an interna-
tional studies class; of those who
Elementary and secondary schools play a big role in this pattern of
do, only 13 percent take more than
underachievement,11 and calls are mounting for “new alignment”
four classes
between high school and college curricula. But there is no set of
• Less than 10 percent of college
overarching goals for students’ cumulative learning that can reliably
students participate in study
guide educational reform and strengthen student accomplishment
abroad programs
from school through higher education. In the absence of such goals,
• Between 5 and 10 percent of
college students achieve basic
two systems—each in need of signiﬁcant change—are being patched
competence in a language other
awkwardly together.
than English, take more than
In principle, policy efforts to develop new forms of accountability
four international studies classes,
for higher education would seem to require an answer to the ques-
and participate in study abroad
tion of what college students need to learn. In practice, that question
programs
has been avoided. Leaders in many states, as well as members of the
Academic Proﬁle, Educational Testing Service
federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education, have urged
(2003–04); Clifford Adelman, “‘Global Preparedness’ of
Pre-9/11 College Graduates: What the U.S. Longitudinal
that states and colleges adopt standardized testing as a way to spur
Studies Say,”
10
educational reform. But none of the policy efforts has provided an
(2004): 243.
answer to the most basic question: what do students need to know?
This public silence about what matters in college is dangerous.
To students, it can send the self-defeating message that the
diploma itself—rather than the quality of learning it represents—is
the key to the future. Many students, in fact, speak of college in just
that way, and they view the degree as a ticket to be stamped before
they can move forward. “It’s just a piece of paper. But that piece of
paper will get you the interview at whatever job you want.”12
Contemporary students need and deserve better guidance. The
majority no longer follow a traditional path through college. Nearly
60 percent of those who earn a baccalaureate degree now enroll in two
or more institutions before they ﬁnish their studies.13 Most students
work, many attend part-time, and since 40 percent are twenty-four or
older, many are raising families as well.14 These trends will accelerate
as higher education reaches out with new vigor to increase college

access for those who have historically been underserved: low-income
students and racial and ethnic minorities. In a demanding world, a
FIGURE 2
ﬁrst-rate education is plainly more important than ever. But today’s
SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING DEGREE
ATTAINMENT BY COUNTRY
students need greater clarity about the meaning of that goal as they
move across multiple colleges and universities on what is often an
Percentage of twenty-four-year-olds
extended journey toward a degree.
with ﬁrst university degrees in natural
sciences or engineering, 2000 or most
To faculty and staff, countless numbers of whom are already
recent year
working to reverse the pattern of underachievement in college, the
public silence about what matters in college is discouraging, even
Finland
France
demoralizing. There have been widespread efforts throughout higher
Taiwan
South Korea
education for over a generation to design and advance new forms of
United Kingdom
active and engaged learning—practices that ask students to apply their
Sweden
Australia
learning to complex, unscripted problems and projects. There is
Ireland
mounting evidence that some of these innovations in teaching and
Spain
New Zealand
learning can now be described as “effective educational practices” (see
Japan
Netherlands
appendix A) because they result in higher levels of achievement.15 The
Canada
beneﬁts are especially striking for minority and low-income students.16
Switzerland
Georgia
But the public—including college-bound students—knows almost
Italy
Iceland
nothing about these emerging innovations. Moreover, with funds for
Israel
expanding the reach of such reforms in sparse supply, these effective
Germany
educational practices still serve only a fraction of today’s college
Kyrgyzstan
Norway
students—with the students who could beneﬁt most still losing out.
Czech Republic
To markets, the silence about what matters in college has already
Belgium
Hungary
sent the strong message that, if you just call it “college,” anything goes.
Austria
The label now applies to every possible form of postsecondary activ-
0
5
10
15
ity, from campuses where faculty engage even ﬁrst-year students with
National Science Board, 2004.
. Two volumes, Arlington, VA;
the emerging frontiers of knowledge to the more than four thousand
National Science Foundation (volume 1, NSB,
04-1; volume 2: NSB 04-1A). Appendix Table 2-35.
commercial or “career” colleges whose mission is to prepare students
only for a speciﬁc occupation (see appendix B). Policy leaders often
recommend career colleges as an efﬁcient way to expand access for
students who, in an earlier era, would not have attended college at all.
With Congressional blessing, these institutions are now eligible for
tax-supported student aid dollars.
While there is certainly a value in targeted training, students and
the general public deserve help in seeing the difference between a
comprehensive college education—whether at a community college
or a university—and a program designed to provide a much more
limited form of preparation. School reformers are currently working
all over the United States to dismantle the inequitable systems of aca-
demic versus vocational “tracking” that became common in American
high schools during the twentieth century and to replace them with
a rigorous preparatory curriculum for all high school students. Yet
differential tracks of the same kind are multiplying in postsecondary
education. In higher education, as in the high schools, these tracks are
stratiﬁed by income and race.
The LEAP National Leadership Council strongly supports current
efforts throughout American society to expand college access and
degree attainment, especially for students from underserved commu-
nities (see ﬁg. 3). The analysis and recommendations presented in this
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

report draw extensively on a generation of experimentation that was
FIGURE 3
spurred in large part by the need to educate these recently arrived
BACHELOR’S DEGREE ATTAINMENT BY
students far more effectively.
RACE AND INCOME
But the commitment to expanded college access needs to be
Twenty-ﬁve- to twenty-nine-year-olds
anchored in an equally strong commitment to educational excel-
by race, 2005
lence. Student success in college cannot be deﬁned only in terms of
40
enrollment, persistence, and degree completion. These metrics, while
important, miss entirely the question of whether students who have
placed their hopes for the future in higher education are actually
20
achieving the kind of learning they need.
The public and policy inattention to the aims, scope, and level of
student learning in college threatens to erode the potential value of
college enrollment for many American students.
College Learning for the New Global Century is a report about the
By age twenty-four by family
aims and outcomes of a twenty-ﬁrst-century college education. It is
income, 2003
also a report about the promises American society needs to make—and
keep—to all college students, especially those for whom college is a
80
route, perhaps the only possible route, to the American dream.
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
U.S. Department of Education, The Condition of
Education 2006. Table 31-3. “Family Income and Higher
Education Opportunity 1970 to 2003.” Postsecondary
Education Opportunity, no. 156 (2005).
AAC&U | Introduction: A Dangerous Silence

In releasing this report, the National Leadership Council for Liberal
Education and America’s Promise breaks the prevailing silence on
the important aims and outcomes of a twenty-ﬁrst-century col-
lege education. College Learning for the New Global Century calls on
American society to give new priority to a set of educational outcomes
that all students need from higher learning—outcomes that are closely
calibrated with the realities of our complex and volatile world.
The council urges a new recognition that, in this global century,
every student—not just the fortunate few—will need wide-ranging
and cross-disciplinary knowledge, higher-level skills, an active sense of
personal and social responsibility, and a demonstrated ability to apply
knowledge to complex problems. The learning students need is best
described as a liberal—and liberating—education.
In a deliberate break with the academic categories developed in the
last century, liberal education is deﬁned in this report not as a discrete
set of disciplines—the “liberal arts and sciences” alone—but rather as
a comprehensive set of aims and outcomes that are essential both for
a globally engaged democracy and for a dynamic, innovation-fueled
economy (see p. 12). Reﬂecting the traditions of American higher
education since the founding, the term “liberal education” is not used
in any partisan sense, but rather as a description of the kinds of learn-
ing needed to sustain a free society and to enable the full development
of human talent.
The educational aims and outcomes recommended here are needed
in every area of human endeavor. These outcomes can and will be
achieved in many different ways, across highly diverse institutional
contexts and ﬁelds of study. But the forms of learning depicted on
page 12 are important for all students and should be fostered across
the entire educational experience.
Further, this report calls on policy leaders to expand substantially
the investment in active, hands-on, collaborative, and inquiry-based
forms of teaching and learning—making full use of new educational
technologies—to ensure that all students have rich opportunities to
fully achieve the intended learning outcomes. The use of effective and
engaging educational practices will be the key to higher achievement
for contemporary college students.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

The Essential Learning Outcomes
Beginning in school, and continuing at successively higher levels across their college studies,
students should prepare for twenty-first-century challenges by gaining:
Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World

• Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories,
languages, and the arts
Focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporary and enduring
Intellectual and Practical Skills, including

• Inquiry and analysis

• Critical and creative thinking

• Written and oral communication

• Quantitative literacy

• Information literacy

• Teamwork and problem solving
Practiced extensively, across the curriculum, in the context of progressively more challenging
problems, projects, and standards for performance
Personal and Social Responsibility, including

• Civic knowledge and engagement—local and global

• Intercultural knowledge and competence

• Ethical reasoning and action

• Foundations and skills for lifelong learning
Anchored through active involvement with diverse communities and real-world challenges
Integrative Learning, including

• Synthesis and advanced accomplishment across general and specialized studies
Demonstrated through the application of knowledge, skills, and responsibilities to new settings
and complex problems
Note: This listing was developed through a multiyear dialogue with hundreds of colleges and universities about needed goals for student
learning; analysis of a long series of recommendations and reports from the business community; and analysis of the accreditation re-
quirements for engineering, business, nursing, and teacher education. The ﬁ ndings are documented in previous publications of the Asso-
ciation of American Colleges and Universities: Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College (2002), Taking
Responsibility for the Quality of the Baccalaureate Degree (2004), and Liberal Education Outcomes: A Preliminary Report on Achievement
in College (2005).

The essential learning outcomes recommended in this report
reﬂect an important emerging consensus—among educators and
employers—about the kinds of learning needed for a complex and
volatile world. This new consensus reﬂects a dawning awareness that
America’s future will depend on an unprecedented determination to
develop human talent as broadly and fully as possible:
• In an era when knowledge is the key to the future, all
students need the scope and depth of learning that will enable
them to understand and navigate the dramatic forces—physical,
cultural, economic, technological—that directly affect the
quality, character, and perils of the world in which they live.
• In an economy where every industry—from the trades
to advanced technology enterprises—is challenged to
innovate or be displaced, all students need the kind of intel-
lectual skills and capacities that enable them to get things done
in the world, at a high level of effectiveness.
• In a democracy that is diverse, globally engaged, and
dependent on citizen responsibility, all students need an
informed concern for the larger good because nothing less will
renew our fractured and diminished commons.
• In a world of daunting complexity, all students need practice
in integrating and applying their learning to challenging
questions and real-world problems.
• In a period of relentless change, all students need the kind
of education that leads them to ask not just “how do we get this
done?” but also “what is most worth doing?”
With organizations constantly reinventing their products and their
processes, and with questions about public and life choices more
complex than ever, the world itself is setting higher expectations
for knowledge and skill. The essential learning outcomes respond to
this reality.
Liberal Education and American Capability
In 1947, the Truman Commission on Higher Education assigned
liberal education to general education courses taken in the ﬁrst two
years of college. Its report provided federal sanction for the view that
liberal/general education addresses the “nonvocational” aspects of
learning.17 That view has been widely inﬂuential. On many four-year
campuses and at most community colleges, liberal education is now
virtually synonymous with general education: broad courses that students
usually take in the initial phase of college, before focusing on a major.
Research conﬁrms that, in the wider society, many still see
liberal education as the “nonvocational” or “less marketable” part of
the curriculum.18 That twentieth-century view is now obsolete, and
this report presents a very different vision for college learning.
In an economy fueled by innovation, the capabilities developed
through a liberal education have become America’s most valuable
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

economic asset. The student learning outcomes recommended on
page 12—rich knowledge, higher-level skills and creativity, social
responsibility, examined values, and the ability to apply learning to
complex and unscripted problems—are the keys to America’s promise.
These forms of learning are now needed in every part of life, includ-
ing the workplace, and in all ﬁelds of study, including the professional
and occupational ﬁelds. Because of their importance, these outcomes
are concerns for the entire educational experience, and not just for
the ﬁrst two years of college. The aims and outcomes of a liberal
education are essential to our nation’s future.
These essential learning outcomes should become the guiding
compass for student accomplishment in the twenty-ﬁrst century. They
provide a common framework both for new forms of accountability
and for new and more productive educational alignments between
high school and college. The outcomes also serve as a compass to help
students connect general education and college majors.
These outcomes can and should be addressed in different ways
across varied ﬁelds of study. Engineers, for example, use quite different
inquiry and communication skills than anthropologists. Intercultural
preparation will mean one thing for an elementary school teacher and
another for a graduate heading into global business. Even effective
writing takes different forms in different ﬁelds and settings. Because
competence is always related to context, students need to work on
the liberal education outcomes in their major ﬁeld(s) as well as their
precollegiate and general studies. This report does not recommend
teaching “skills” apart from content and context.
This report is a call to ensure that students have every opportunity
to really develop these essential capabilities, whatever they study and
wherever they go to college.
The essential learning outcomes describe capacities that will
be important to each student’s future and to the vitality of our
society. They provide a shared direction and framework for the entire
continuum of learning, from school through college, and beyond.
College Learning for the New Global Century elaborates this
vision for a twenty-ﬁrst-century college education and recommends
a course of action to achieve it.
AAC&U | Part 1: What Matters in College?

In recent years, the ground has shifted for Americans in virtually
every important sphere of life—economic, global, cross-cultural,
environmental, civic. The world around us is being dramatically
reshaped by scientiﬁc and technological innovations, global inter-
dependence, cross-cultural encounters, and changes in the balance
of economic and political power. Only a few years ago, Americans
envisioned a future in which this nation would be the world’s only
superpower. Today it is clear that the United States—and individual
Americans—will be challenged to engage in unprecedented ways
with the global community, collaboratively and competitively.
These seismic waves of dislocating change will only intensify. The
world in which today’s students will make choices and compose lives
is one of disruption rather than certainty, and of interdependence
rather than insularity. To succeed in a chaotic environment, graduates
will need to be intellectually resilient, cross-culturally and scientiﬁcally
literate, technologically adept, ethically anchored, and fully prepared
for a future of continuous and cross-disciplinary learning. Learning
about cultures and social structures dramatically different from one’s
own is no longer a matter just for specialists. Intercultural learning is
already one of the new basics in a contemporary liberal education,
because it is essential for work, civil society, and social life. Scientiﬁc
and technological learning are equally fundamental and may well
determine the difference between those who are prepared to deal
with change and those who are buffeted by it.
Narrow Learning Is Not Enough
The general public—and many college students—continue to
believe that choosing a “marketable” college major is the key to future
economic opportunity. Guided by this conviction, many students see
study in their major ﬁeld as the main point of college, and actively
resist academic requirements that push them toward a broader educa-
tion. Many policy makers hold a similar view of career preparation,
evidenced by their support for occupational colleges and programs
that promise initial job readiness but not much else.
Those who endorse narrow learning are blind to the realities of
the new global economy. Careers themselves have become volatile.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

Studies already show that Americans change jobs ten times in the
EMPLOYERS’ VIEWS
two decades following college, with such changes even more frequent
“At State Farm, only 50 percent of high
for younger workers.19 Moreover, employers are calling with new
school and college graduates who apply
urgency for graduates who are broadly prepared and who also possess
for a job pass the employment exam….
the analytical and practical skills that are essential both for innovation
Our exam does not test applicants on
and for organizational effectiveness:
their knowledge of ﬁnance or the insur-
ance business but it does require them
• “Employers do not want, and have not advocated for, students
to demonstrate critical thinking skills
prepared for narrow workforce specialties. . . . Virtually all
and the ability to calculate and think
occupational endeavors require a working appreciation of
logically. These skills plus the ability to
the historical, cultural, ethical, and global environments that
read for information, to communicate
and write effectively, and to have an
surround the application of skilled work.” (Roberts T. Jones,
understanding of global integration
president, Education Workforce Policy, LLC)20
need to be demonstrated. This isn’t just
• “Intel Corp. Chairman Craig Barrett has said that 90 percent of
what employers want; it’s also what
the products his company delivers on the ﬁnal day of each year
employees need if they are to be
did not exist on the ﬁrst day of the same year. To succeed in that
successful in navigating the workplace.”
kind of marketplace, U.S. ﬁrms need employees who are ﬂexible,
knowledgeable, and scientiﬁcally and mathematically literate.”
(Norman R. Augustine, retired chairman and chief executive of
“To be successful in global companies
Lockheed Martin Corporation)21
like Siemens, business managers must
• “[The] curriculum needs to help students develop . . . leadership,
be able to navigate local market differ-
teamwork, problem solving, time management, communication
ences, seek opportunities for collabora-
tion between businesses, and promote
and analytical thinking.” (Business-Higher Education Forum)22
cooperation across functions. A solid
• “[Business leaders are] frustrated with their inability to ﬁnd ‘360
foundation in the liberal arts and
degree people’. . . .” (Findings from 2006 focus groups among
sciences is necessary for those who
business executives)23
want to be corporate leaders.”
• “Integrated capabilities are the key to this industry’s future.”
(Keith Peden, senior vice president of human resources,
Raytheon Company, 2006)24
Using a business rather than an academic vocabulary, employers are
urging more—and better—liberal education, not less. Because employ-
ers view innovation as their most important comparative advantage,
they seek to hire graduates who can think beyond the routine, and
who have the ability not just to adapt to change, but to help create it.
Responding to employer concerns, the engineering community is
already pioneering the approach to a twenty-ﬁrst-century liberal edu-
cation recommended in this report. The engineers’ goal is to graduate
what some are calling “T-shaped students,” with the vertical part of the
“T” representing the traditional parts of an engineering degree, and
the crossbar pointing to competencies traditionally identiﬁed with the
“liberal arts”—including ethics, global knowledge, intercultural literacy,
and strong communication and collaborative skills (see ﬁg. 4). The “T”
itself shows that these different capabilities need to be integrated so that
students can apply them in work and community settings.
Humanists may see similar potential in the letter “H,” where the
crossbar represents ﬁeld-speciﬁc knowledge and skills and the vertical
bars represent capacities related to context and community. Whatever
the model, the message to students is the same. Employers do not want
“toothpick” graduates who have learned only the technical skills and
AAC&U | Part 2: From the American Century to the Global Century

who arrive in the workplace deep but narrow. These workers are
sidelined early on, employers report, because they cannot break out of
their mental cubicles.25
Broad capabilities and perspectives are now important in all ﬁelds,
from the sciences to business to the humanities. The new economic
reality is that narrow preparation in a single area—whether that ﬁeld is
chemistry or information technology or history—is exactly the opposite
of what graduates need from college. Study-in-depth remains an impor-
tant part of the overall pattern for college learning. But students deserve
to know that focusing only on one specialty is far from enough.
By now, readers who value liberal education may be actively
protesting: it’s not just about the economy! And we agree. The aims
and beneﬁts of liberal education go far beyond work to enrich every
sphere of life—environmental, civic, cultural, imaginative, ethical.
These important topics are addressed in later pages.
But this report places special emphasis on liberal education as the
portal to economic opportunity because so much of the public—and
so many students—have been told just the opposite. Today, powerful
social forces, reinforced by public policies, pull students—especially
ﬁrst-generation and adult students—toward a narrowly instrumental
approach to college. This report urges educators to resist and reverse
that downward course. It is time to guide students away from limiting
choices and toward a contemporary understanding of what matters
in college.
The way forward is to make a new commitment to provide a
horizon-expanding liberal education for all college students, not just
for some. Through much of the twentieth century, liberal education was
identiﬁed only with selected academic ﬁelds—the arts and sciences—
and, more recently, with the most selective colleges and universities.26
The net effect has been to position liberal education as an elite option,
the expected form of learning at The University of Chicago, Pomona
FIGURE 4
College, or the University of Virginia—and in all campus honors
WHAT SIEMENS ADVISES FOR SUCCESS:
BUILD A T-SHAPED PROFILE
programs—but hardly necessary for everyone.
In this new global century, these older views stand in the way of
needed change. Liberal education has been America’s premier educa-
• General management skills
e.g., Analytics, Communication, Teaming
tional tradition since the founding, and the recommendations in this
• Personal Traits
report build on its core strengths: broad knowledge, strong intellectual
e.g., Self-discipline, Civil courage, Faith, Always
skills, personal and social responsibility. But in a democratic society,
gives his/her best, Continuous improvement,
Positive thinking, Questions the given, Untiring
the goal must be to extend opportunity and excellence to everyone,
endurance, Social responsibility, Keeps healthy
and ﬁt, Loyalty (But not a “Yes-person”), Enjoys
and not just to a fortunate minority.
General Capabilities
life, Balance (work/private)
The way to achieve this goal is to make the essential learning out-
comes a shared priority for all students, whatever their chosen areas of
study, and wherever they enroll in college.
The World Is Changing and Liberal Education Must Change Too
Specialties
Second Language
This report recommends, in sum, a challenging and liberating education
Industry Experience
that develops essential capacities, engages signiﬁcant questions—both
Mechanical Engineering
contemporary and enduring—in science and society, and connects
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

analytical skills with practical experience in putting knowledge to use.
FIGURE 5
In doing so, this report also calls on educators to adapt liberal edu-
cation to the needs of our time. Certain aims of liberal education are
REMAPPING LIBERAL EDUCATION
enduring through every era, to be sure. Helping students master the
Liberal Education
Liberal Education
arts of inquiry, analysis, and communication is the signature strength
in the Twentieth
in the Twenty-ﬁrst
of a liberal education and a core reason why it is the best and most
Century
Century
powerful preparation both for the economy and for democracy.
• an elite curriculum
• a necessity for all
But the key to continued national vitality is the ability of citizens
• nonvocational
students
to adapt creatively to new challenges. Liberal education in the United
• an option for the
• essential for
fortunate
success in a
States did transform its practices, dramatically, just a century ago.
What
global economy
Starting about 1870 and continuing into the next century, the rise
and for informed
of new disciplines and a new role for the United States in the world
citizenship
led to revolutionary change in the organization of the undergraduate
• liberal arts
• all schools, com-
curriculum. A comparably dramatic change in the approach to liberal
colleges or
munity colleges,
education is needed today to better prepare college graduates for the
colleges of arts
colleges, and
and sciences in
universities; across
complex realities of this new global century (see ﬁg. 5).
Where
larger institutions
all ﬁelds of study
The ﬁrst step toward a contemporary approach to liberal educa-
(recommended)
tion is to remap the educational landscape so that all parts of the
• through studies in
• through studies
academy and all ﬁelds of study address—in ways appropriate to their
arts and sciences
across the entire
subjects—the essential learning outcomes recommended in part 1
ﬁelds (“the major”)
educational
(see p. 12).
and/or through
continuum: school
How
To take this step, higher education will also need to break out
general education
through college
in the initial years
(recommended)
of the academic categories and silos that were established in the last
of college
curriculum revolution, and that still organize the division of labor
across most campuses, from community colleges to research universities.
As a result of the last curricular revolution, liberal or liberal arts
education is conventionally deﬁned as study in selected academic
ﬁelds: the humanities, the social sciences, the sciences, and, by the last
quarter of the twentieth century, the arts as well. The many professional
and applied ﬁelds—including engineering, business, education, and
health—have not traditionally been seen as part of a liberal education.
The resulting lines of demarcation guide students’ educational choices
to this day on thousands of campuses. Because of these inherited divid-
ing lines, millions of college students are routinely compelled to choose
either a liberal arts and sciences pathway or a professional pathway just to
ﬁll out their college applications. The message sent by this forced choice
is exactly the opposite of what students need to know.
The traditional boundaries between the liberal arts and the profes-
sional ﬁelds are not just a bureaucratic inconvenience. In practice, they
have created academic silos that impede faculty and staff efforts to
foster a more holistic and integrative approach to college learning. It
is in everyone’s interest to create new crosswalks and communal
spaces that support educational collaboration across the traditional
academic dividing lines between the liberal arts and sciences and the
professional ﬁelds. But if collaborations are to succeed, they need to be
based in shared goals. The essential learning outcomes, which place
strong emphasis on teaching students to integrate and apply their
learning, provide this larger sense of shared interests.
Within this altered educational landscape, many different path-
AAC&U | Part 2: From the American Century to the Global Century

ways to a liberal education are possible. Students will continue to be
able to choose among a variety of educational settings: universities,
colleges, community colleges, faith-based institutions, technical
institutes. Students will still concentrate in selected ﬁelds because,
while not sufﬁcient, studies in depth are important. They will
certainly need a rich mix of arts and sciences courses in order to
learn about the wider world. The key change is that, whatever
and wherever they elect to study, each college student will be
helped to achieve, in ways appropriate to his or her educa-
tional interests, a high level of integrative learning and dem-
onstrated accomplishment across the full range of essential
learning outcomes.
Movement toward this needed remapping has already begun. The
long-standing boundaries between the professional ﬁelds and the
arts and sciences have started to blur. Engineering and technology
ﬁelds have forged the way. The Accrediting Board for Engineering
and Technology now looks for evidence that programs are teaching
students to integrate their liberal arts competencies with their
technical studies.27 Similar developments are emerging across many
professional ﬁelds, and on many campuses.
Simultaneously, many arts and sciences departments are placing new
emphasis on “practical experience” and “applied learning” through
internships, service learning, student projects, and community-based
either
research. Many campuses also are inventing a “vertical” or four-year
framework for general education, with the explicit goal of foster-
ing new connections between students’ specialized studies and their
or
broader learning about science, cultures, and society.
Students themselves are adding to this remapping by choosing
double majors or majors and minors that freely span the “liberal arts/
professional” divide.
These forward steps notwithstanding, many of the most imagina-
tive efforts to forge new connections between the liberal arts and
sciences and professional studies still hover on the margins. Higher
education needs new leadership and new determination to move
these promising developments from the margins to the center.
Engaging Twenty-First-Century Realities
Breaking out of the academic silos is a good beginning, but much
more needs to be done in order to align teaching and learning
practices with the realities of the new global century. In the twentieth
century, both school and college studies were organized, reﬂecting
the sensibilities of the industrial age, in terms of modular parts: dis-
ciplines, subjects, courses, credit hours. But this modular curriculum,
organized a century ago and still largely intact, has become increasingly
dysfunctional. The disciplines are taught as ends in themselves, and so
too are most courses. Yet students are taking courses in many different
disciplines, and often at two or more institutions. For many, the result
is a fragmented and incoherent educational experience rather than
steady progress toward deeper and more integrated understandings
and capacities.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

The expected curriculum is usually deﬁned, often with enabling
FIGURE 6
state regulation, in terms of speciﬁc “core” subjects in school and
A FRAGMENTED CURRICULUM: MANY
speciﬁc general education categories in college (see ﬁg. 6). State
COURSES, FEW CONNECTIONS
“distribution” requirements for students’ general education courses
Core Subjects in the Schools
are the far-reaching legacy of the mid-twentieth-century view that
The National Commission on Excellence
equated liberal education with general education, and assigned it to
in Education (1983) made inﬂuential
the ﬁrst two years of college.
recommendations for the four years of
But the frontiers of knowledge, both in scholarship and the
high school. Most states are still work-
world of work, now call for cross-disciplinary inquiry, analysis, and
ing to meet these goals for all students.
application. The major issues and problems of our time—from
4 years
English
3 years
Social studies
ensuring global sustainability to negotiating international markets to
3 years
Science
expanding human freedom—transcend individual disciplines. The
3 years
Mathematics
core subjects provide a necessary foundation, but they should not be
½ year
Computer science
taught as ends in themselves. From school through college, students
2 years

Foreign language (for
also need rich opportunities to explore “big questions” through
college-bound students)
multifaceted perspectives drawn from multiple disciplines.
Statewide Guidelines for General
Even in terms of the old modular curriculum, where each subject
Education Distribution Requirements
has been implicitly deﬁned as a self-contained area of learning, the
at the College Level
curricular pathways from school to college have become chaotic and
Forty states provide guidelines for gen-
redundant. Thanks to the vigorous promotion of Advanced Placement
eral education for all public institutions
courses and dual enrollment (college courses for high school students),
in the state, for a system within the
as many as three million students are already taking “college-level”
state, and/or to guide student transfer.
courses before ﬁnishing the twelfth grade.28 At the same time, because of
Almost all conform to the following
the shortcomings of school preparation, at least 40 percent of all college
general pattern:
students have to take at least one remedial course in college, essentially
1–2 courses
Writing
3–4 courses
Arts and Humanities
revisiting material that they should have learned in high school.29
2–3 courses
Social Sciences
Calls for aligning high school outcomes with college-level skills
2 courses
Science
abound. But the learning students need for this new global era cannot
1 course
Mathematics
be achieved simply by rearranging the existing patchwork of “core
courses” at the school level and “general education requirements” at the
Five states have made global and/or
intercultural studies a requirement,
college level. To help students achieve the essential learning outcomes,
and several others specify particular
it will be necessary to spend time, across all levels of school and college
disciplines.
education, revisiting the larger purposes of education and rethinking
the kinds of connections across disciplines and levels of learning that
: The National Commission on Excellence in
Education,
will best prepare graduates for a complex and fast-paced world.
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Edu-
cation, 1983); Robert Shoenberg, ed.,
Key Questions to Guide School–College Planning
(Washington, DC: Association of
American Colleges and Universities, 2005).
The following questions, keyed to twenty-ﬁrst-century challenges,
are intended to spark the needed school–college dialogues—among
educators, across disciplines, with employers and policy leaders, and
with the wider public. Ultimately, these questions call for the mapping
of more purposeful curricular pathways, from school through college
and across the disciplines.
How can we ensure that graduates are well prepared to participate in
an interdependent global community?
“The Global Situation: The beneﬁts of development are not shared equita-
bly…. Injustice, poverty, ignorance, and violent conﬂict are widespread
and the cause of great suffering…. The foundations of global security are
threatened. These trends are perilous—but not inevitable.”
—The Earth Charter
AAC&U | Part 2: From the American Century to the Global Century

Global integration is now our shared context. The potential beneﬁts
of global interdependence are extraordinary, but so too are the chal-
lenges. Wealth, income, and social power are dramatically unequal
within and across international boundaries. We are reminded daily
of the clash of cultures, histories, and worldviews. The globe itself
is fragile and vulnerable as are our shared civic spaces. These global
challenges will be with us for the foreseeable future. Yet today, less
than 10 percent of four-year graduates are leaving college globally
prepared.30 The United States is a world power. But it provides most
of its students with a parochial education.
In this new era of interdependence, how should Americans
prepare to contribute to a shared and sustainable future? What should
Americans learn about the global economy and its changing
dynamics? About world ecosystems and our capacity to sustain them?
About the United States as a world power? About the realms of human
heritage, cultures, religions, and laws, as well as the continuing quests
to advance human dignity and justice? And, in this era of fundamen-
talisms and competing certainties, how will students engage and learn
with people whose worldviews, histories, beliefs, and aspirations may
be different in crucial ways from their own?
How can we prepare graduates for a global economy in which change
and innovation are constants?
“The way forward is to become more open, more experimental, and to em-
brace the unknown….The bar for innovation is rising. And simply running in
place will not be enough.”
—The Council on Competitiveness
Innovation is widely touted as America’s most important competi-
tive advantage and the key to continued prosperity. But the currently
dominant educational practices in American education were forged
over a century ago, in an era that placed high value on broad under-
standing, reasoning, and abstract analysis and that gave only passing
educational attention to collaboration, problem solving with external
communities, and learning from experience.
In the context of a global economy that demands innovation,
technological savvy, entrepreneurship, and risk taking, what kinds of
educational practices will prepare graduates to get things done in the
world? How do we teach them to critically evaluate the quality of
information and convert this information into knowledge and action?
How will students learn to solve problems effectively in collaboration
with people from very different backgrounds and cultures? How will
we teach students to combine entrepreneurial creativity and techno-
logical know-how with humanistic values and vision?
How can we prepare all graduates for a world shaped by scientiﬁc and
technological advances and challenges?
“Together, we must ensure that U.S. students and workers have the ground-
ing in math and science that they need to succeed and that mathematicians,
scientists and engineers do not become an endangered species in the
United States.”
—The Business Roundtable
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

Americans have grown accustomed to world leadership in science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (the STEM ﬁelds). As a
society, we take for granted the unprecedented prosperity that this
world leadership provides. But the majority of Americans are scien-
tiﬁcally illiterate.31
What progression of studies, beginning in school and continuing
in college, will dramatically raise the level of STEM preparation and
literacy for all students? How do we reverse the alarming trends that
show Americans falling steadily behind both in the percentage of college
graduates who prepare in STEM ﬁelds and in the actual numbers of
Americans who go on to successful careers in science and technol-
ogy?32 How can we persuade all Americans that STEM literacies are
essential rather than a special option reserved for the gifted? What will
be required to dramatically change the way STEM ﬁelds are taught so
that the majority of Americans will no longer be left behind?
What kinds of learning are needed for knowledgeable and responsible
citizenship?
“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It
will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”
—Robert Maynard Hutchins
Americans live in the world’s most powerful democracy. But
democracy, as the founders recognized, is much more than a design
for government and lawmaking. Rather, it is a framework for a special
kind of society in which citizens must take mutual responsibility for
the quality of their own communities and their shared lives. Democra-
cies are founded on a distinctive web of values: human dignity, equality,
justice, responsibility, and freedom. The meanings and applications of
these values are rarely self-evident and frequently contested. Moreover,
most students never actually study such issues in any formal way, either
in school or in college. Many students, the research shows, do not
think that civic engagement is even a goal for their college studies.33
What are the complementary roles of school and postsecondary
education in educating citizens? What is the particular role of col-
lege in preparing graduates to contribute to the greater good, both
at home and abroad? What should Americans learn about the history
and prospects for democracy, in our own society and in other parts of
the world? How do we cultivate what Martha Nussbaum has called
the “narrative imagination” so that graduates are better able to engage
diverse communities and other societies?34 How do we prepare
citizens to address the growing and destabilizing divisions between
those with hope and those who still live on the margins of our own
and other societies?
How do we help graduates compose lives of meaning and integrity?
“It is difﬁcult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day /
for lack / of what is found there”
—William Carlos Williams
Throughout history, liberal education—and especially the arts and
humanities—have been a constant resource, not just for civic life
but for the inner life of self-discovery, values, moral inspiration,
AAC&U | Part 2: From the American Century to the Global Century

spiritual quests and solace, and the deep pleasures of encountering
beauty, insight, and expressive power. Ultimately, it is this dimension—
LIBERAL EDUCATION AND VALUES
serious engagement with questions of values, principles, and larger
“Liberally educated students are curious
meanings—that marks the essential difference between instrumental
about new intellectual questions, open
learning and liberal learning. For communities and individuals that
to alternative ways of viewing a
situation or problem, disciplined to
are denied social power and voice, the arts and humanities make pos-
follow intellectual methods to conclu-
sible what Azar Naﬁsi calls “the Republic of the Imagination,” a space
sions, capable of accepting criticism
where those who have been marginalized and persecuted can draw
from others, tolerant of ambiguity, and
courage and hope from stories, language, culture, and example.35 For
respectful of others with different views.
all human beings, the arts and humanities invite exploration of the
They understand and accept the
big and enduring questions about what it means to be human. They
imperative of academic honesty.
Personal development is a very real
also foster the crucial human and civic capacity of empathy, the ability
part of intellectual development.”
to care about and even identify with perspectives and circumstances
other than one’s own. The moral power of the arts and humanities has
been one of the secrets of their lasting inﬂuence; those who experi-
ence these sources of inspiration readily see their importance, both for
the human spirit and for community.
In this new century, the dizzying pace of change and the unabated
prospects for social and environmental disruption will continue to place
enormous strains on individuals as well as communities. Each individual
will need sources of inner fortitude, self-knowledge, and personal re-
newal. Taking time for reﬂection on one’s own values will be crucial.
Everyone will need to consider not just how to pursue a course of
action, but the value and integrity of alternative courses of action.
How, in this kind of environment, do we prepare students to
cultivate their own inner resources of spirit and moral courage? How
do we enable them to engage moral and social dilemmas with clarity
about their own values as well as the capacity to hear and respond to
others’ deeply held commitments? How do we prepare graduates to
make difﬁcult ethical choices in the face of competing pressures? And
how, without proselytizing, do we foster students’ own development
of character, conscience, and examined values?
Fulﬁlling the Promise of College in the Twenty-ﬁrst Century
In college and university classrooms, in think tanks, in business
organizations, and in government and corporate ofﬁces across the
country, thoughtful people have begun to discuss the key questions
with a new sense of urgency. Commissions have formed; reports are
starting to multiply; resolve is growing. And, on many college
campuses, one can ﬁnd substantial centers of innovation where
dedicated groups of faculty and staff already are responding creatively
to just these kinds of questions. Many have invented impressive
interdisciplinary curricula that engage learners brilliantly with every
one of the questions outlined above. There are dozens of active reform
movements across every facet of collegiate learning—from the ﬁrst to
the ﬁnal year, and between the curriculum and student life.
To date, however, both these emerging discussions and the educa-
tional changes inspired by them are too preliminary, too fragmented,
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

and far too limited. New approaches are emerging. (For a list of
effective educational practices, see appendix A.) But these are too
often relegated to the margins of institutional life. Many of the most
signiﬁcant reforms advance without reference to one another, and
there is no shared sense of the whole. As a result, the impact on
student learning is fragmented and diluted.
These discussions do not yet include the public, nor have they had
much impact on education policy at the state and national levels. In
fact, for the public universities and community colleges that educate
over 75 percent of college students,36 state requirements concerning
“general education” are locked into an old system of required credits
in speciﬁc areas of study (a few courses each in the arts and humanities,
social sciences, and sciences) that functions today as a resistant barrier
to the innovative curricula many faculty members want to create (see
ﬁg. 6 on p. 20).
The twentieth-century legacy of relegating liberal/general
education to the ﬁrst two years of college alone was codiﬁed across
the nation. But that code has become a stranglehold on educational
creativity and needs revision.
Students, for the most part, have been left entirely out of the
debates about their own long-term educational interests. It is the
nation’s ﬁrst-generation and less advantaged students—young and
old alike—who are the most likely to enroll in institutions and
programs that provide narrow training. First-generation students also
are less likely than others to take courses in mathematics, science, social
studies, humanities, history, foreign languages, or even computer
science.37 First-generation students are ﬂocking to college. But many
are missing out on a twenty-ﬁrst-century education.
Because the prospects for American society are dependent on the
quality of learning, insider discussions and educational reforms that
mainly serve the most fortunate are inadequate. It is time to create
a genuinely inclusive national dialogue about higher learning in the
twenty-ﬁrst century, and to embrace a vision for the future that is
worthy of a great democracy.
And it is time to mobilize new determination and new leadership
commitments—on the part of educators, policy makers, and the
public as a whole—to advance substantially our national investment in
educationally effective practices that can help all students understand,
prepare for, and achieve the important outcomes of a twenty-ﬁrst-
century liberal education.
AAC&U | Part 2: From the American Century to the Global Century

The aims and outcomes described as “essential” in part 1 of
this report (see p. 12) call for students to become “inten-
tional learners” who focus, across ascending levels of study,
on achieving these learning outcomes. But to help students do this,
educational communities will also have to become more intentional
both about these essential outcomes and about effective educational
practices that help students integrate their learning and apply it to
complex questions.
The principles and recommendations presented here are intended
to give impetus to this new intentionality about the aims and quality
of college learning, and about the complementary roles of school and
college in preparing graduates for twenty-ﬁrst-century realities.
In shaping the principles, the National Leadership Council for
Liberal Education and America’s Promise has drawn from many
sources: active reform movements on many campuses and in a
broad array of disciplines; recommendations from academic leaders;
analyses from the business community; new standards in the accrediting
communities; and dialogues held across the United States with
campus, business, and community leaders.
The council believes that higher education can and should play a
crucial role in fulﬁlling America’s promise in this new global century:
tapping potential, creating opportunity, fueling an innovative economy,
reducing inequities, solving problems, and inspiring citizens to create
a more just, humane, and sustainable world.
Toward these ends, the LEAP National Leadership Council calls
for a new compact—between educators and American society—to
adopt and enact the following seven Principles of Excellence.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

Aim High—and Make Excellence Inclusive
Make the Essential Learning Outcomes a Framework for the Entire Educational Experience,
Connecting School, College, Work, and Life
Give Students a Compass
Focus Each Student’s Plan of Study on Achieving the Essential Learning Outcomes—
and Assess Progress
Teach the Arts of Inquiry and Innovation
Immerse All Students in Analysis, Discovery, Problem Solving, and Communication,
Beginning in School and Advancing in College
Engage the Big Questions
Teach through the Curriculum to Far-Reaching Issues—Contemporary and Enduring—
in Science and Society, Cultures and Values, Global Interdependence, the Changing Economy,
and Human Dignity and Freedom
Connect Knowledge with Choices and Action
Prepare Students for Citizenship and Work through Engaged and Guided Learning on
“Real-World” Problems
Foster Civic, Intercultural, and Ethical Learning
Emphasize Personal and Social Responsibility, in Every Field of Study
Assess Students’ Ability to Apply Learning to Complex Problems
Use Assessment to Deepen Learning and to Establish a Culture of Shared Purpose and
Continuous Improvement
AAC&U | Part 3: A New Framework for Excellence

Principle One
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
Aim High—and Make Excellence Inclusive
Aim High—and Make Excellence Inclusive
Make the Essential Learning Outcomes a Framework for the Entire
Educational Experience, Connecting School, College, Work, and Life
(SCHEV) has identiﬁed a set
Americans have entered a global century that presents “greater
of competencies that all students should
achieve from their college studies. The
expectations” for knowledge in every area of life. This new era calls
competencies are similar to the “intel-
on higher education to set signiﬁcantly higher standards for student
lectual and practical skills” that the LEAP
achievement while avoiding the disadvantages of standardization. The
National Leadership Council deﬁnes as
essential learning outcomes (see p. 12) provide a common framework
“essential.” SCHEV requires public institu-
and a shared sense of direction for student accomplishment across
tions to submit “reports of institutional
school and college. These outcomes are not intended as a checklist of
effectiveness” that include assessments
of student learning in written communi-
courses and requirements to—in the current campus vernacular—“get
cation, technology/information literacy,
out of the way.” Nor do they dictate a particular set of courses that all
quantitative reasoning, scientiﬁc reason-
students should take.
ing, critical thinking, and oral communi-
Rather, these aims and outcomes are intended to build students’
cation. Each individual campus deﬁnes
working understanding of the world and to foster capacities that will
the outcomes, establishes expected
be practiced in school and used beyond school. The essential learning
achievement levels, creates or chooses
assessment methods, and reports on re-
outcomes provide an inclusive framework for a contemporary liberal
sults. The SCHEV framework creates pub-
education by deﬁning it not as a selected set of disciplines, but as a
lic and transparent reports of institutional
set of resources for all aspects of life: work, citizenship, and personal
learning outcomes while maintaining in-
fulﬁllment.
stitutional autonomy to deﬁne and assess
Contemporary students compose their education across many
student learning outcomes in relation to
different institutions and from many different academic ﬁelds and
institutional mission and priorities.
courses. Of those who complete a bachelor’s degree, nearly 60 percent
take courses at more than one college or university and nearly 25
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
percent at more than two institutions.38 The essential learning out-
Aim High—and Make Excellence Inclusive
comes set a common framework that provides a sense of purpose and
Faculty at
direction to guide student progress across the many different parts of
(IUPUI) have
the academic system. The outcomes can be used for P–16 planning
agreed to six Principles of Undergraduate
in the states, articulation between two-year and four-year colleges and
Learning that deﬁne important learning
universities, and accreditation standards for institutions and academic
outcomes for each IUPUI student. These
ﬁelds. At every level, a clear and constant focus on these essential
include communication and quantitative
skills; critical thinking; intellectual depth,
outcomes can help systems, institutions, academic programs, and
breadth, and adaptiveness; integration
students themselves become more intentional.
and application of knowledge; under-
These forms of learning can and should be fostered through many
standing society and culture; and values
different curricular pathways. But to ensure their achievement, each
and ethics. These principles apply to the
institution and each program will need to be certain that students have
entire educational experience and to the
multiple opportunities and appropriate academic support to work toward
departmental programs as well as gen-
eral education courses. Most students
the intended outcomes. To reach high levels of success, each system,
take a ﬁrst-year learning community
each institution, and each academic program will need to set standards
that explores these core goals and helps
and guidelines for the expected level of student accomplishment.
students begin work on them. To docu-
Within higher education, many will see these aims and outcomes
ment and assess students’ achievement,
as goals for the general education program alone. That is not the inten-
IUPUI faculty are developing e-portfolios
tion. General education plays a role in their fulﬁllment. But it is not
that set standards for the outcomes and
make the basis for their assessments
feasible to assign to general education programs alone the breadth and
visible. IUPUI has provided extensive
scope of learning described in the essential learning outcomes. The
support for faculty development as well
majors also have a crucial role to play in fostering rich knowledge,
as student orientation as it encourages
strong intellectual and practical skills, an examined sense of personal
this shift toward goals across the entire
educational experience.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

and social responsibility, and the ability to integrate and apply knowl-
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
edge from many different contexts. If the majors neglect these shared
Aim High—and Make Excellence Inclusive
goals, students are unlikely to achieve them.
is one of the
nation’s largest and most diverse com-
Recommendation 1
munity colleges. In 2006, Miami Dade
organized student focus groups to better
understand college learning goals from
students’ perspectives. The questions
posed in these groups, adapted from a
focus group discussion guide used in
AAC&U’s student research for LEAP,
This call is extended to each college, community college, and
asked students their reasons for attend-
university; to state systems; and to the ﬁelds of study within colleges
ing college, what college outcomes
would lead to a successful life, and how
and universities. Every institution and system should develop for itself
their education helps them achieve these
a vision of intended learning outcomes that addresses, in ways
outcomes. The responses of the focus
appropriate to mission, the multiple goals for college. This vision
group students indicate that liberal edu-
should be expressed in a public document that is accessible to every-
cation is valued and that students view
one and frequently consulted by faculty, staff, and students alike. In
college as more than accrued vocational
state systems, the educational outcomes should become shared
beneﬁts. Moreover, three-quarters of
the focus group students reported that
responsibilities, applicable across institutional boundaries.
liberal education was important to their
Every ﬁeld should be taught as part of liberal education, and every
education and that liberal education
ﬁeld should audit, clarify, and strengthen its own practices for foster-
provides the necessary preparation for
ing the knowledge and capacities identiﬁed as essential outcomes of a
today’s workforce.
twenty-ﬁrst-century education.
Recommendation 2
Nearly half the nation’s college students, and the majority of
students from low-income families, begin their studies in two-year
institutions.39 It should be a national priority to ensure that these
students, whatever their career choices and preparation, become richly
prepared for a changing economy, for the option of further study, and
for a lifetime of continuous learning—as employees and as citizens.
This recommendation neither requires nor anticipates that
community college students should study only, or primarily, what
are conventionally known as arts and sciences or “general education”
courses. Rather, it calls on two-year and four-year institutions, in every
state and region, to collaboratively remap the curriculum so that arts
and sciences and professional or “career” courses can work together,
from ﬁrst to ﬁnal years, to foster the broad knowledge, sophisticated
skills, personal and social responsibility, and demonstrated achievement
that every student needs and deserves.
Faculty and staff who teach remedial/developmental courses
should take an active part in this remapping, so that these courses help
students prepare successfully for the expectations and standards of the
regular curriculum.
AAC&U | Part 3: A New Framework for Excellence

Principle Two
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
Give Students a Compass
Give Students a Compass
Focus Each Student’s Plan of Study on Achieving the Essential Learning
Outcomes—and Assess Progress
has begun educating high school stu-
American college students already know that they want a degree.
dents about the essential skills they are
The challenge is to help students become highly intentional about
expected to bring to college. For the last
six years, it has produced a “How to Get
the forms of learning and accomplishment that the degree should
to College” poster and distributed it to
represent
middle and high schools in California.
In today’s academy, many students are not following any
This poster, available in English, Span-
comprehensive academic plan at all. Rather, many are working to
ish, Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese,
cobble together a sufﬁcient number of courses that will enable them
gives students and their families a com-
to meet the required number of credits—typically 60 at the associate’s
pass for essential learning outcomes
needed for success in college as well as
level and 120 at the bachelor’s level—necessary to earn a degree.
a roadmap for the application process.
Setting goals for educational accomplishment based on the essential
With sections such as “What Classes
learning outcomes can change this haphazard approach to academic
Should I Take in High School?” and
study. Each student will know what is expected, and each student can
“Why Are These Classes Important?”
construct a plan of study that simultaneously addresses his or her own
the poster clariﬁes important skills and
their signiﬁcance in college. To provide
interests and assures achievement in the essential learning outcomes.
further guidance, the system also gives
Students will know before they enter college, for example, that
an early diagnostic test—keyed to its
they are expected to bring their communication skills—written and
own placement standards in mathemat-
oral—to a high level of demonstrated accomplishment. As they work
ics and English—to eleventh graders.
with mentors to plan a course of study, they will learn to seek out,
rather than avoid, courses in which extensive writing and/or oral
presentations are required. The same principle applies to all the
outcomes. By clarifying the intended forms of learning and their
signiﬁcance, and by helping students connect these broad outcomes
with their own individual goals and areas of study, educators will help
all students become more intentional about their learning and more
likely to reach high levels of accomplishment.
Recommendation 3
Students should begin intensive work in each of these areas of
learning—knowledge, skills, responsibilities, and integrative learning
—as early as middle school. And they should understand that they will
be expected—wherever they enroll, whatever their intended career,
and no matter how far they go in college—to attain progressively
higher levels of competence in each of these key areas. Teachers, faculty
members, and student life professionals should work together to help
students understand why these outcomes are important, and how they
are applied in work settings, civil society, and students’ own lives.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

Recommendation 4
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
Give Students a Compass
The curriculum at
is
designed to encourage students to play
an active and intentional role in shaping
their education. Rather than selecting
from traditional departmental majors,
The expected standards should be made public, and should
students at Bard major in programs
periodically be reviewed by external experts to ensure appropriate
that cross disciplinary boundaries. This
quality. While in high school, students should receive periodic
program-based approach is combined
feedback about their progress, as well as guidance on the connections
with core curricular experiences that
between the expected outcomes and future success in both work and
develop broad capacities and allow
for milestone assessments of learning.
college. Diagnostic assessments in the ﬁrst year of college, and
New students begin their studies with
milestone assessments upon completion of community college and/or
the Workshop in Language and Think-
the second year of college, can help students evaluate their own
ing, an intensive summer program that
achievement to date and identify areas of needed improvement. Each
serves as an introduction to college-level
student’s plan of study—informed by the assessments—should clearly
learning, and continue in the ﬁrst-year
connect expected outcomes to the institution’s required studies,
seminar, where they explore many of
the intellectual ideas that will form the
students’ major ﬁeld(s), and their elective choices. Where today’s
basis of their subsequent study. In the
students frequently see curricular requirements as a set of obstacles to
second semester of the sophomore
get “behind them” as early as possible, the students of tomorrow will
year, students undertake “moderation,”
know that learning is cumulative and that continuous progress is both
a process that requires them to reﬂect
expected and supported.
on their academic experiences, assess
their performance, and plan in consul-
tation with faculty advisers the work
Principle Three
they will pursue in their major ﬁeld.
Teach the Arts of Inquiry and Innovation
This culminates with the senior project,
which serves as the capstone to a Bard
Immerse All Students in Analysis, Discovery, Problem Solving, and
education. Together, these elements of
Communication, Beginning in School and Advancing in College
the college’s curriculum help students
to integrate their learning and follow a
In a complex world, there is no way that students can master every-
purposeful course of study as they chart
thing they “need to know.” The scope is too broad, and the frontiers
a path through their undergraduate
of knowledge are expanding far too rapidly. The key to educational
education.
excellence, therefore, lies not in the memorization of vast amounts
of information, but rather in fostering habits of mind that enable
students to continue their learning, engage new questions, and reach
informed judgments. Helping students master analytical capacities has
been one of the most enduring commitments of a liberal education.
Since this nation was founded, American leaders have emphasized the
value of these capacities to a free society; today, we see their value for
an innovation-fueled economy as well.
Given their importance, the foundations for inquiry, investigation,
and discovery should be laid early and reinforced across the educational
system. A good education should provide multiple opportunities for
students to engage in “inquiry-based learning,” both independently
and in collaborative teams. Through inquiry projects, students should
learn how to ﬁnd and evaluate evidence, how to consider and assess
competing interpretations, how to form and test their own analyses
and interpretations, how to solve problems, and how to communicate
persuasively.
Fifty years ago, it would not have been feasible to emphasize
AAC&U | Part 3: A New Framework for Excellence

inquiry and discovery in many ﬁelds and institutions. Today, however,
the advent of new technologies has created unprecedented opportuni-
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
ties for students to take part in collaborative inquiry, creative projects,
Teach the Arts of Inquiry and Innovation
and research. The need and the opportunity are there. Yet most schools
With the support of a Ewing Marion
and colleges have barely tested the waters. Faculty members who
Kauffman Foundation grant, the
supervise student research and/or teach “capstone” courses to ad-
is striving to make
entrepreneurship—and the skills that
vanced college students frequently are frustrated by students’ poor
accompany it such as problem solving,
preparation for tackling complex inquiry and creative projects. That
continuous learning, and innovation—
is because few departments and institutions have developed curricula
a basic component of undergraduate
and pedagogies that incrementally foster and assess students’ skills in
education by infusing it into all academic
inquiry and innovation as they advance through a course of study.
disciplines. The University of Rochester
Fundamental change is needed, at all levels of education, to help
has created the Center for Entrepreneur-
ship (CFE), which brings together faculty,
students develop the intellectual and practical skills basic to inquiry,
students, and community members
innovation, and effective communication.
from a variety of academic disciplines
to encourage and enhance the culture
Recommendation 5
of entrepreneurship at the university
and within the Rochester community.
As a result, there are now courses at
the University of Rochester available for
students wishing to focus speciﬁcally
on entrepreneurship as it relates to any
Undergraduates today, even ﬁrst-year students, can learn how
major, and the CFE holds a variety of
workshops, seminars, and conferences
to use tools of research, analysis, design, and creation that are more
for faculty as well. The University of
powerful than those available to professionals a generation ago. Whether
Rochester is one of several dozen liberal
the challenge is studying classical Greece, designing semiconductors,
arts colleges and research universities
analyzing elections, or extending access to the arts, the technological
that are connecting entrepreneurship
tools available to students are extraordinary. The Internet and other
with teaching, learning, and research in
communications technologies also make it possible for students to
arts and sciences disciplines.
take part in creative problem solving with partners outside of the
classroom—community agencies, arts organizations, corporations,
schools, and people in other parts of the world. Technology-assisted
inquiry should be carefully woven into the expected academic expe-
rience and emphasized in the college majors.
Recommendation 6
The best public and private schools and many of the most suc-
cessful charter schools have long made analysis and inquiry central to
their programs of high school preparation and learning. But in many
schools, students write very little and receive no preparation in critical
inquiry and research skills. When this foundation is lacking, colleges
must play catch-up when it should be their primary task to move
students’ skills in analysis and application to a much higher level. New
emphasis on the skills essential to inquiry and innovation is needed
• in the preparation of teachers and faculty;
• in the design of curriculum and assessments in the schools;
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
TEACH THE ARTS OF INQUIRY AND INNOVATION
Curricular strategy
Transparency
Classroom practices
Example
In high
Advisers and teach-
Teachers provide guid-
school, students
ers stress the goals of
ing questions, prompts,
enroll in a theme-
answering questions and
models, frameworks,
Students study the election process
based academy of
justifying the answers,
and suggested sites for
by creating video campaign ads for
three or four linked
framing new questions,
information. They use
candidates or issues in an upcoming
courses that promote and relating raw data to
direct observation, case
election. They also make “process”
synthesis through
the questions.
studies, simulations, and
Web sites that lead them to reﬂect
projects.
role playing.
upon their learning and thinking.
In college,
Professors make explicit
Writing assignments
ﬁrst-year seminars
the outcomes of further
and/or oral presentations
and selected courses developing powers of
ask students to identify a
A ﬁrst-year learning community for
in general education
observation, synthesis,
problem/issue and devise
students in engineering includes an
introduce inquiry and and problem posing as
ways to resolve it. Profes-
investigation of reverse engineer-
analysis through
well as expectations in
sors provide guidelines
ing, instruction on creating a Web
speciﬁc problems/
reﬂection and analy-
and format. Techniques
page, an introduction to engineering
projects/assignments. sis. Critical thinking is
might include journals,
careers, and a look at professional
stressed as a goal of
brainstorming, teamwork,
organizations. It also includes a
the ﬁrst-year seminars/
or demonstrations.
group research paper, teamwork top-
courses and of the entire
ics, and a PowerPoint presentation.
institution.
Across the
Professors discuss
Projects based on complex
college curriculum,
critical observation,
issues/problems of the
problem-based
problem posing and
ﬁeld ask students to draw
A junior-year, foundational nursing
learning occurs in
problem solving,
on their speciﬁc content
course includes a problem-based
disciplinary courses
analysis, synthesis, and
knowledge as well as on
learning model for each key concept.
as students begin
interpretation of complex
their developing powers
Progressing through the course
their majors.
issues in the discipline.
of analysis, synthesis, and
involves advancing from simple to
At the institutional level,
interpretation. Students
complex concepts. A module, which
facilities support prob-
pose their own ques-
might last from several days to one
lem-based learning and
tions and devise ways of
month, could focus, for example, on
inquiry is stressed as an
answering them. Active,
nutrition and hygiene issues in nurs-
institutional priority for
hands-on learning could
ing patients from diverse cultural
all majors.
alternate with lectures
and religious traditions. Students
that provide “just-in-time”
form groups early in the course to
information that students
work through the problems posed.
can apply immediately.
At the senior
Course catalogs and
Under faculty guidance,
level, a capstone
departmental information
students or teams choose
project or thesis
about the senior capstone
a signiﬁcant problem/
All seniors must complete a cap-
in the major (or
experience clearly state
project to research/carry
stone that, for computer science ma-
in general educa-
that the capstone requires
out over a semester or
jors, consists of a team project that
tion) culminates the
advanced critical analysis,
two. The professor could
spans two semesters. Ideas for real
inquiry approach to
evidence, synthesis,
provide guiding ques-
programming needs are solicited
learning by asking
conceptualization, inter-
tions but the emphasis is
from the university and local com-
students to draw on
pretation, and evaluation.
on student initiative. The
munity. Students are responsible for
the knowledge and
Formative assessments
work could be made pub-
all aspects, from establishing initial
skills acquired in
during the experience
lic through publishing an
requirements to implementation
the major, general
provide reminders of the
article or presenting it to
and deployment; they need to ﬁgure
education, electives,
need for insightful use of
community and industry
out how to interact with and design
and cocurricular
data, logic, and diverse
experts.
products for non-specialist users.
experiences.
resources.
Adapted from Andrea Leskes and Ross Miller,
(Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2006), 37.

• as students progress from year to year;
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
• in the college admissions process, which ought to attend more
Engage the Big Questions
closely to student experience in inquiry- and project-based
learning;
In addition to core general education
requirements,
• in the careful design of ﬁrst-year and second-year experiences
(SJSU) has implemented SJSU
geared to students’ differing levels of preparation and skill;
Studies, which are intended to foster
• in the careful design of advanced studies that emphasize inquiry,
students’ advanced, integrative learn-
analysis, and the application of knowledge to complex problems.
ing as citizens and thoughtful people.
Each SJSU undergraduate must take
In recalibrating school and college curricula, and the connec-
one upper-level class in each of four
tions between them, educators need to ensure that every student
topic areas—Earth and Environment;
experiences the excitement and intellectual growth that follows from
Self, Society, and Equality in the United
States; Culture, Civilization, and Global
working to solve real problems. In doing so, they will also provide
Understanding; and Written Commu-
students with the forms of preparation they need both for a dynamic
nication. These courses connect the
and innovative economy and for a vibrant democracy.
curriculum to larger, complex issues in
society as a way of preparing students
to become better global citizens and
Principle Four
educated adults. Like many campuses in
Engage the Big Questions
the California State University system,
San Jose State University serves many
Teach through the Curriculum to Far-Reaching Issues—Contemporary
transfer students who have taken all or
and Enduring—in Science and Society, Cultures and Values, Global In-
many of their core general education
terdependence, the Changing Economy, and Human Dignity and Freedom
requirements at other institutions. By
Study in the arts and sciences remains an essential and integral part
framing distinctive upper-level goals
for general education, SJSU afﬁrms its
of a twenty-ﬁrst-century liberal education. But it is time to challenge
commitment—ofﬁcially endorsed by
the idea—tacitly but solidly established in American education—that
the Faculty Senate—to liberal education
simply taking a prescribed number of courses in liberal arts and
for all students. It also creates its own
sciences ﬁelds is sufﬁcient. Rather, new steps must be taken to en-
“signature” approach to that goal.
sure that study in these core disciplines prepares students to engage
with the “big questions,” both contemporary and enduring. Study in
the arts and sciences should provide students with opportunities to
explore the enduring issues, questions, and problems they confront as
human beings—questions of meaning, purpose, and moral integrity.
These studies should also teach students to look beyond themselves,
by considering their obligations to others, and to look beyond the
classroom, by applying their analytical skills and learning to signiﬁcant
issues and problems in the world around them.
The research on this point is compelling. All students—including
those least prepared—learn best when they can see the point of what
they are doing. Illuminating real-world implications can help students
discover the excitement and the beneﬁts of powerful learning.40
By engaging students with complex issues, questions, and problems
where there are real consequences at stake, and by teaching students
how to draw and assess knowledge from many sources, this problem-
centered approach to liberal education will prepare students both for
the challenges of a dynamic global economy and for the responsibili-
ties of citizenship.
To achieve this vision, it will be necessary to revisit the chaotic and
redundant practices that currently subvert powerful learning in both
school and college. Millions of college students are presently repeat-
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

ing work they should have accomplished in high school, and paying
college tuition to do so. At the same time, three million students
are now taking “early college courses” that give them a leg up on
college-level requirements, especially in arts and sciences ﬁelds.41 Often,
however, students can use these early college credits to avoid further
learning in core disciplines—such as science, mathematics, history, or
languages—once they are enrolled in college. With the demand for
advanced knowledge expanding exponentially, it is self-defeating to let
today’s college students opt out of key disciplines before they even begin
their higher education. It is equally self-defeating to cover essentially
the same content in both high school and college survey courses.
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
Therefore, a coordinated effort is needed to ensure that all Americans
Engage the Big Questions
reach high levels of knowledge and skill—begun in school and advanced
One of seven colleges in the Dallas
in college—in the following areas of twenty-ﬁrst-century learning:
County Community College system,
• science, mathematics, and technology—including a solid
serves nearly twenty
grasp of the methods by which scientiﬁc knowledge is tested,
thousand students who collectively
validated, and revised
speak seventy-nine different ﬁrst
languages. Richland’s several academic
• cultural and humanistic literacy—including knowledge of
enrichment programs reinforce the
the world’s histories, American history, philosophical traditions,
college’s emphasis on educating stu-
major religions, diverse cultural legacies, and contested questions
dents to build sustainable communities,
both at home and abroad. The Global
• global knowledge and competence—including an under-
Studies program, for example, chal-
standing of economic forces, other cultures, interdependence, and
lenges students to search for solutions
political dynamics, as well as second-language competence and
to issues such as “peace, ecological
direct experience with cultural traditions other than one’s own
balance, social and economic justice,
intercultural understanding, democratic
• civic knowledge and engagement—including a rich under-
participation, and the impact of technol-
standing of the values and struggles that have established democratic
ogy.” By design, Global Studies inter-
institutions and expanded human freedom and justice, and direct
sects with other academic enrichment
experience in addressing the needs of the larger community
programs, including Richland’s campus-
wide service-learning program, learning
• inquiry- and project-based learning—including multiple
communities (two courses that address
opportunities to work, independently and collaboratively, on
a common topic from different disciplin-
projects that require the integration of knowledge with skills in
ary perspectives), peace studies, and
analysis, discovery, problem solving, and communication
several ethnic studies programs. To
earn a Global Studies Certiﬁcate—which
This is not a menu of course categories. Rather, it is a proposal to
complements other majors—students
move beyond the fragmented modular curriculum that students
take ﬁfteen hours of Global Studies
already take in the arts and sciences, in both school and college
courses, including a learning commu-
(see p. 20, ﬁg. 6). The list above speciﬁes core areas of twenty-
nity, and also complete an academically
ﬁrst-century learning and invites fresh consideration of the way
based service-learning project. Students
study within and across different disciplines—from school through
who take one year of a second language
and earn honors grades are named
college—can be organized to develop deep knowledge and strong
Global Studies Scholars. With a strong
competence in each of them.
emphasis on integrative planning and
Self-evidently, four years of study is not enough time to achieve
continuous educational improvement,
such breadth and depth of knowledge. But students are spending
Richland College became in 2006 the
at least sixteen years—if they complete a bachelor’s degree—in the
ﬁrst community college to win the
combination of school and college. If educators map goals for learning
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality
Award, the nation’s highest presidential
in these core areas across this extended sequence of study, the goals
recognition for quality and organiza-
become attainable.
tional excellence.
AAC&U | Part 3: A New Framework for Excellence

Recommendation 7
The task goes well beyond identifying needed knowledge in such
basic disciplines as literature, history, or biology. Rather, educators
should revisit the overarching goals for student learning in the arts and
sciences, and create disciplinary and cross-disciplinary patterns of learn-
ing that build deep understanding of the world in which students live
and work. Because these broad areas of learning illuminate the context
for students’ specialized interests, the core areas should be addressed
across the several years of college, and not just in the ﬁrst two years.
Recommendation 8
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
The transition from school to college should be the joint
Connect Knowledge with Choices and Action
responsibility of schools and higher education, and should be care-
The “practical liberal arts” are deeply
fully planned to ensure that students meet high standards in each
embedded in
’s prize-
of the core areas of expected learning. Standards should be set for
winning college curriculum. The Wagner
needed levels of achievement in these essential areas of learning at the
Plan requires students to complete
point of college entrance, and the ﬁnal years of high school should be
issue-centered integrative learning
designed to ensure that students meet the expected entrance standards.
communities (LCs) during the ﬁrst year,
the intermediate years, and the senior
Colleges should provide diagnostic feedback to their students on their
year. The LCs are organized around a big
actual level of preparation and achievement in these expected areas of
theme or problem and include experi-
twenty-ﬁrst-century learning, and on what they need to accomplish
ential as well as academic learning. In
further to meet the institution’s own expectations for graduation-level
the ﬁrst year, students take two courses
knowledge and competence. At all points along the way, educators
from different disciplines related to the
should work with external partners to help students understand why
overarching theme and complete an
experiential ﬁeld placement related to
and how these core areas of learning are important to success in the
the LC theme in the New York metro-
economy and to the responsibilities of citizenship.
politan area. Students also complete a
“reﬂective tutorial” which emphasizes
Principle Five
writing and teaches them to evaluate
and integrate their learning from differ-
Connect Knowledge with Choices and Action
ent disciplines and from the ﬁeld place-
Prepare Students for Citizenship and Work through Engaged and
ment. A senior-year LC is linked to the
student’s major and acts as a capstone
Guided Learning on “Real-World” Problems
course, connecting knowledge from the
Both democracy and the economy depend on creative problem
major with practical applications in the
solving, bold experimentation, and the capacity to learn from the
student’s chosen ﬁeld. At graduation,
Wagner students are already practiced
results of experimentation. As they move through their studies,
in integrating knowledge learned inside
students should have multiple opportunities to grapple with and
and outside the classroom in the context
prepare for these “real-world” demands. Assignments should com-
of real-world problems and settings.
pel them to deﬁne the task, explain its signiﬁcance, test alternative
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

solutions, and take actions based on their own judgment. Some of
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
these learning experiences can take the form of independent study;
Connect Knowledge with Choices and Action
others should be carefully designed experiences in collaborative learn-
Long a pioneer in education for women,
ing with diverse partners. Every student should prepare for both life
has recently become
and citizenship by working frequently on unscripted problems, and by
a pioneer once again in integrating
building capacities to function as part of an effective team. Fostering
engineering education within a liberal
this kind of informed practical judgment should be a priority for
arts education. Smith College’s Picker
every academic ﬁeld.
Engineering Program encourages stu-
dents to set their engineering studies
Students today have many opportunities for “learning in the ﬁeld,”
in a larger social and global context.
including service-learning courses, internships, cooperative educa-
It also teaches the social, ethical, and
tion, and community-based research. Some majors routinely include
professional responsibilities essential
apprenticeship assignments, such as student teaching. Many students
to successful practice in the ﬁeld. The
do projects with diverse communities and/or in other parts of the
program’s stated outcomes include the
world as part of their formal study. And 90 percent of college students
fundamentals of engineering disci-
plines, but also prioritize the ability to
work while they are in school.42
collaborate and communicate effec-
While all these experiences present rich opportunities for con-
tively with diverse audiences, lifelong
necting knowledge with choices and action, too many are essentially
learning, and the value a contemporary
“add-ons” in which students are left to their own devices for any
and historical perspective can give
insights gained. Students perform service on their own time; they ﬁnd
to science. A senior design project
jobs and even internships independently of their academic studies.
challenges students to address broad
societal aspects of their work as well as
Study abroad, another form of experiential learning, is powerful for
technical skills. The Picker Program tells
students, but any educational “debrieﬁng” on what they learned by
students that, “as critical thinkers and
living in another culture frequently goes on quite apart from their
socially responsible decision makers,
home institutions and departments. Work—especially off-campus
they will help engineer a sustainable
employment—is too often considered a distraction rather than a
future for our global community.”
potentially rich venue for applying what one is learning in the
academic program.
To build students’ preparation for both work and citizenship, higher
education needs to give new emphasis to fostering practical judgment
and problem solving “in the ﬁeld.” Community-based learning should
be integrated into the curriculum, and efforts to strengthen the qual-
ity of students’ learning from such experiences should become an
integral part of a contemporary liberal education.
In fostering these kinds of practical judgment and problem solving,
there is much to be learned from the professional ﬁelds and from the
performing arts. As Lee Shulman and his colleagues at the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching have demonstrated,
many of the signature practices of professional education are designed
to help individuals develop their capacities for effective judgment in
contexts where the right course of action is uncertain.43 They do this
by making the learner’s thinking and assumptions public in the pres-
ence of knowledgeable mentors and peers and by subjecting these to
intense discussion and challenge. Similarly, both in the professions and
in the performing arts, the learner’s performance itself is public, and
students work closely with mentors on ways to improve the quality
of their work. Learning to give and receive feedback is already part
of both professional and artistic development; it ought to become
expected practice in all ﬁelds of study.
To apply knowledge productively in ﬁeld-based settings, all
AAC&U | Part 3: A New Framework for Excellence

students should experience in-depth questioning from faculty, staff,
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
and other mentors about their assumptions, analyses, conclusions, and
actions. Learners also need both guidance and feedback, from men-
Foster Civic, Intercultural, and Ethical
Learning
tors and peers, as they probe the facets of a complex issue and test
their own insights against both theory and the experiences of others.
In 1994,
faculty adopted University Studies, a
And to prepare for the world’s diversity, all students need frequent
four-year general education program
opportunities to engage in collaborative interaction with people
for all students. The program is
whose assumptions and life experiences are different from their own.
organized around four broad goals:
inquiry and critical thinking,
Recommendation 9
communication, the diversity of human
experience, and ethics and social
responsibility. The culminating senior
experience is a community-based
learning course designed to provide
interdisciplinary teams of students with
the opportunity to apply what they have
These opportunities can take many different forms to serve
learned in their major and in their other
different educational ﬁelds and student learning goals. Models for good
University Studies courses to a real
practice in experiential learning have already been developed in many
challenge emanating from the metro-
professional and performing arts ﬁelds, in the service-learning com-
politan community. These partner-
munity, and in some global studies programs. These models should be
ships—designed to engage diverse
more widely studied and adopted. Each institution and program should
communities for common purposes—
are mutually beneﬁcial ventures, as the
review and strengthen its standards for supervising, supporting, and
organizations help students place their
evaluating students’ ﬁeld-based learning.
academic learning in a real-world
context, and students assist organiza-
Recommendation 10
tions in meaningful projects such as
grant writing, designing curriculum and
educational materials, and serving as
advocates for underserved populations
and issues. Assessments show that the
community work helps students
become more aware of their own biases
Some of the most powerful learning in college occurs in activities
and prejudices and deepens students’
undertaken as part of the cocurriculum, both on campus and through
understanding of sociopolitical issues.
campus outreach to community partners. The essential learning
Students also develop a better under-
outcomes can be fostered through intentional integration of students’
standing of how to make a difference in
in-class and out-of-class activities. There should be far more systematic
their own communities.
attention paid to fostering these opportunities for guided experiential
learning and to documenting, through expanded forms of assessment,
the gains students make on the essential learning outcomes through
these cocurricular experiences.
Principle Six
Foster Civic, Intercultural, and Ethical Learning
Emphasize Personal and Social Responsibility, in Every Field of Study
Since the founding of the United States, Americans have recognized
the close connections between education and the sustainability of our
democratic experiment. Traditionally, however, the role of produc-
ing an educated citizenry was assigned to the public schools, which
enrolled almost everyone, rather than to higher education, which until
recently served only a small fraction of the population.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

Reﬂecting this inherited division of labor, higher education is
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
poised ambivalently between the past and the future concerning its
Foster Civic, Intercultural, and Ethical
appropriate role in fostering democratic values and responsibilities.
Learning
Mission statements proclaim education for citizenship as central. They
places
testify to the role of the academy in fostering personal and social
strong emphasis on educating gradu-
responsibility, at home and abroad; in preparing graduates to contrib-
ates who demonstrate ethical integrity,
ute to the community; and more recently, in building communities
reﬂective thinking, and social responsi-
bility. To introduce these goals, the uni-
that acknowledge and value difference.44 But the faculty members
versity has developed the BGeXperience
who actually teach students rarely are asked to think deeply about
(BGeX), a program designed to ease the
their own responsibilities for educating engaged and ethical citizens.
transition from high school to college
In practice, many assume that teaching students to think critically is
while, at the same time, engaging ﬁrst-
the academy’s main contribution to the public good.
year students with the core values that
During the last two decades, higher education has embarked on
inform the university’s vision statement.
BGeX begins with a three-day orienta-
new efforts to foster civic engagement. A “service-learning move-
tion and continues into the ﬁrst semes-
ment” has gained strong traction on all kinds of campuses—large and
ter with a “values” course—a class that
small, two-year and four-year. Simultaneously, many faculty members
provides conventional instruction in a
have worked to make diversity studies and intercultural learning a new
discipline and also encourages students
basic for student learning in college. Both service learning and experi-
to reﬂect upon values questions in that
ences with diversity are powerful catalysts for deeper engagement and
ﬁeld. An introductory course in geology,
for example, covers the essential content
insight. They teach students to engage, respect, and learn from people
of a geology survey but also considers
with worldviews that are very different from their own. They involve
how values shape debates about global
students with many of society’s most urgent unsolved problems. They
warming and the theory of evolution. By
challenge individuals to consider, at a deep level, the responsibilities
asking students to think critically about
of a democratic society to its citizens, and their own responsibili-
values questions without prescribing a
ties as human beings and citizens. And these forms of learning have
speciﬁc set of conclusions, BGeX aspires
to educate more ethically aware and
signiﬁcant effects on students’ ethical awareness, challenging learners
thoughtful citizens. Those who are inter-
to confront alternative beliefs and values, and to think more deeply
ested can also pursue service learning,
about their own. Research studies show that service and diversity
take upper-division courses that explore
experiences have positive effects both on students’ civic commitments
values in the disciplines, and even be-
and on their overall cognitive development.45
come BGeX peer facilitators later in their
undergraduate careers.
As with so many other “high-impact” educational innovations,
these efforts to prepare students for active citizenship in diverse
communities still hover on the margins of the mainstream academy.
Some students participate and beneﬁt; large numbers do not. Less than
half of college seniors report that their college experience signiﬁ-
cantly inﬂuenced their capacity to contribute to their communities;
only half report signiﬁcant gains in learning about people from differ-
ent backgrounds.46 Moreover, there is searing evidence that study in
many majors actually depresses students’ interest in active citizenship.47
This is a warning note indeed for a democracy that depends on civic
responsibility and commitment.
The higher education community needs to match its commitment
to educating responsible and ethical citizens with learning practices, in
both the curriculum and cocurriculum, that help all college students
engage their responsibilities to self and others. Further, vigorous efforts
are needed to build new understanding that civic development—in
all the forms described here—is an essential rather than an elective
outcome of college.
AAC&U | Part 3: A New Framework for Excellence

Recommendation 11
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
Foster Civic, Intercultural, and Ethical
Learning
Hundreds of colleges, community col-
leges, and universities now encourage
students to take part in community
Questions about the relationship between individuals and societies,
service. But in the wake of Hurricane
about major developments in human histories, and about cross-cultural
Katrina,
has taken
encounters are classic themes for the shared curriculum, whether in a
service learning and civic engagement
to another level. Tulane requires all
ﬁrst-year experience, or a general education sequence, or in advanced
students to make public service an
capstone courses that provide a larger context for students’ specialized
integral part of their college studies,
studies. First-year and general education courses should intention-
both in the core curriculum and in
ally help students grapple with the kinds of “big questions” they will
their advanced studies. To meet the
inevitably face both as human beings and as citizens—about science
public service graduation requirement,
and society, cultures and values, global interdependence, the changing
students must take one service-learn-
ing class during their ﬁrst two years.
economy, and human dignity and freedom. The general education
During this time, students also create
curriculum is also a place where students can explore the values, in-
and maintain an e-portfolio that charts
stitutions, and aspirations that are basic to democracy, examining these
their progress and reﬂects on their
complex questions through multiple and cross-disciplinary lenses:
service learning. In their later college
philosophical, empirical, historical, cross-cultural.
years, students choose a second public
The foundations for such studies need to be laid in the schools,
service experience. This may be another
service-learning course, a service-learn-
through a course of study that builds rich understandings both of
ing internship, a public service research
world histories and of American history, and of the relationships be-
project or honors thesis project, a
tween them (see recommendation 7). Building on these precollegiate
service-based study abroad program,
experiences, college courses can help students explore the difﬁcult
or a capstone experience that includes
issues of our world, the ones where both the nature of the problem
a public service component. The Center
for Public Service sustains partnerships
and the range of solutions are actively contested. Equally important,
with community organizations that
college forums can model and teach the kinds of respectful delib-
provide a context for students’ public
eration—across difﬁcult differences—that are crucially important to a
service commitments.
sustainable democracy.
Recommendation 12
Every ﬁeld of study, no matter how “technical,” is a community of
practice. For this reason, no ﬁeld is “value-free.” Every community of
practice is framed by communal values and ethical responsibilities;
these expectations need to be made explicit and fully explored among
students and faculty. Similarly, every ﬁeld is rife with contested
questions whose resolution may have far-reaching human conse-
quences. In every community of practice, there are some people with
power and others who lack and/or seek power. Often, questions of
power are further complicated by legacies of racial, ethnic, gender, and
other disparities. When students choose a ﬁeld of study, they need and
deserve the opportunity to explore openly all of the issues basic to
their community with their fellow students and with guidance from
mentors. They should have many occasions to clarify and apply their
own sense of ethical, professional, and civic responsibilities as they
move forward in their chosen course of study.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

Principle Seven
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
Assess Students’ Ability to Apply Learning
Assess Students’ Ability to Apply Learning
to Complex Problems
to Complex Problems
Use Assessment to Deepen Learning and to Establish a Culture of
, a large multi-campus
Shared Purpose and Continuous Improvement
metropolitan university in New York,
has made a comprehensive com-
As afﬁrmed throughout this report, the essential learning outcomes
mitment to assessment as a way of
provide a shared framework for both intentionality and accountabil-
strengthening both teaching and learn-
ity, across the entire educational system, within the various sectors of
ing. Pace works to provide evidence of
higher education, and in students’ own educational planning. Rec-
students’ actual learning over time as a
counter to rankings that look mainly at
ommendation 4 calls on educators to create diagnostic, interim, and
reputation and resources. One strand
capstone assessments in order to give individual students feedback on
in its approach is a strong emphasis on
their progress in achieving the expected outcomes in the context of
senior capstone courses and projects
their chosen course of study.
designed to integrate and evaluate
Especially in light of the high-stakes-testing movement in the
students’ learning in the major. Over 70
percent of the senior class completes
schools, many will want to act immediately to identify standardized
capstones, and Pace wants to make this
tests that can be used to establish how well students are doing on
requirement universal. Balancing locally
the recommended learning outcomes. The 2006 report from the
designed assessments with national
federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education took this
measures, Pace also uses the Collegiate
tack, recommending that every campus measure students’ learning
Learning Assessment, which assesses
with standardized tests, and that the states aggregate and compare the
students’ critical thinking, analytic
reasoning, and written communica-
results of various standardized measures.48
tion abilities using performance tasks
For two reasons, a rush to adopt standardized testing for higher
and writing rather than multiple-choice
education would prove to be a “low-yield” strategy.49 First, the essential
questions.
learning outcomes can be described in common, easily accessible
language (see p. 12), but they are—in practice—complex capacities that
are fostered and expressed quite differently in different ﬁelds. For
example, both a teacher and a chemist will need skills in inquiry,
information literacy, and writing, but their competence in applying
these skills will be manifested in different ways. Thus, general tests of the
recommended learning outcomes will not provide evidence about
students’ ﬁeld-related achievement and competence. Field-speciﬁc tests,
while available in many disciplines, do not generally assess students’
mastery of higher-level intellectual, problem-solving, collaborative, and
integrative abilities. The broad area of assessing civic, intercultural, and
ethical capacities languishes even farther behind in terms of test devel-
opment.50 Yet we cannot afford to neglect these essential outcomes just
because there are no standardized measures to assess them.
Second, standardized tests that stand outside the regular curricu-
lum are, at best, a weak prompt to needed improvement in teaching,
learning, and curriculum. Tests can, perhaps, signal a problem, but the
test scores themselves do not necessarily point to where or why the
problem exists or offer particulars as to solutions. In practice, it takes a
combination of valid, reliable instruments and local, grassroots assess-
ments, across a broad array of curricular, pedagogical, and campus
activities, to determine the precursors and particulars of academic
shortfalls and to determine whether intended interventions are
achieving real results.
The right standard for both assessment and accountability at the
AAC&U | Part 3: A New Framework for Excellence

college level is students’ demonstrated ability to apply their learning
to complex, unscripted problems in the context of their advanced
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
studies. Far-reaching change is needed to ensure that students work
Assess Students’ Ability to Apply Learning
consistently over time on the kinds of higher-order learning—
to Complex Problems
analytical and applied—that prepare them to meet this standard. The
Every student at
best possible way to foster that needed change is to design “mile-
completes a senior
assignment in the major. The projects
stone” and culminating assessments within the expected curriculum
vary across different academic ﬁelds,
that help students and faculty focus together on the intended level of
but each is designed to ensure that
accomplishment and on what students need to do to improve. These
all students have mastered the skills
milestone assessments can be designed in ways that check students’
required for their discipline as well as
intellectual and practical skills as well as their knowledge in a given
key liberal education outcomes—such
area. And they can also include dimensions that address social and
as critical thinking, effective writing,
and problem solving—that all graduates
ethical attentiveness.
should possess. Designed by depart-
Curriculum-embedded assessment, when carefully done, is itself
ment faculty to “make visible” the
a potential “high-yield” educational reform because, by design, it
learning required for the degree—
focuses both faculty and student attention on students’ cumulative
whether it occurs in the major program
progress and actual level of attainment. Many campuses already are
or in general education—the capstone
experimenting with locally designed assignments that show whether
projects are assessed using rubrics
aligned with the intended learning out-
students are developing the expected knowledge and skills, and espe-
comes and probed for several different
cially, whether they can apply their knowledge to complex problems.
kinds of evidence. Individual students
This grassroots approach is the most promising way to focus student
receive feedback on their accomplish-
effort, to engage faculty with evidence about students’ cumulative
ments while faculty review the assess-
progress, and to inform institutional decisions about needed change.
ment evidence at the program level
to shape curricular and pedagogical
Standardized tests, administered periodically, can supplement such
improvements. Over time, the process
grassroots approaches. They can, for example, provide useful warning
of collectively designing and scoring
signals when a campus is setting its sights too low. But standardized
senior assignments has encouraged a
assessments—especially those that stand outside the curriculum and
culture of faculty collaboration.
that rely on a sample of students only—are much too distant from
student and faculty attention to serve by themselves as a forceful
catalyst for signiﬁcant educational change.
Recommendation 13
Students should know from the time they enter college that they
will be expected to complete milestone and culminating projects—
“authentic performances”—to demonstrate both their progress in
relation to the essential outcomes and their ability to use the learning
outcomes in the context of their chosen ﬁelds. These assessments may
consist of portfolios showing a range of student work, or they may
center on required student experiences—such as a senior project or
supervised student teaching—that are integral to their chosen area of
focus. They may include comprehensive examinations in the students’
chosen major.
However the assessments are constructed—and this will vary,
appropriately, across different ﬁelds—the framework for accountabil-
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

ity should be students’ demonstrated ability to apply their learning to
THE PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE
complex problems. Standards for students’ expected level of achieve-
Assess Students’ Ability to Apply Learning
ment also will vary by ﬁeld, but they should all include speciﬁc atten-
to Complex Problems
tion to the quality of the students’ knowledge, their mastery of key
uses writing portfolios
skills, their attentiveness to issues of ethical and social responsibility,
to ensure that undergraduates can write
and their facility in integrating different parts of their learning.
competently in a range of styles and
The National Survey of Student Engagement reports that 60
contexts. By encouraging students to
percent of graduating seniors do some kind of culminating work
reﬂect on—and revise—their writing,
the portfolios themselves constitute
in college.51 These culminating activities—whether courses or proj-
an important educational experience.
ects—already are embedded in the expected curriculum; they already
To meet the portfolio requirement,
are part of the teaching and learning budget. These activities can be
students at the end of their sopho-
structured to show how well students can integrate their knowledge
more year must submit three to ﬁve
and apply it to complex problems, and students’ level of performance
papers demonstrating their ability to
on them can be aggregated and made public.
write effectively in different rhetorical
and disciplinary contexts; each port-
Making students’ actual performance the framework for account-
folio must represent at least two of
ability would require, of course, new attention to the 40 percent of
the college’s four curricular divisions
college students who do not do culminating work and who earn
(Arts and Literature, Humanities, Social
their degrees by passing the requisite number of courses. But if the
Sciences, and Mathematics/Natural
intention is to raise the level of students’ preparation for twenty-ﬁrst-
Sciences) and must include at least one
paper from the “writing requirement”
century challenges, there is no better place to begin.
course. Instructors then certify that the
papers were written for their classes
Recommendation 14
and indicate if they have since been
revised. Finally, students write reﬂective
essays about their writing to introduce
the portfolios. Together, the papers
must demonstrate mastery of each of
This report calls for a new approach to fostering and promoting
several key writing skills—the ability to
student success. But in moving toward this needed shift, it is important
report on observation, to analyze com-
to attend to lessons already learned with existing metrics of student
plex information, to provide interpreta-
tion, to use and document sources, and
achievement. Almost everywhere, “college success” is currently
to articulate and support a thesis-driven
documented through reports on enrollment, persistence, degree
argument. The writing portfolios have
completion, and sometimes, grades. Probed in more detail, these
led Carleton faculty to talk about using
metrics for success make it indisputably clear that college attainment is
the portfolios to assess other liberal
stratiﬁed by income level, and that there are also signiﬁcant disparities
education outcomes such as quantita-
tive literacy and critical thinking.
in attainment between white students and speciﬁc groups of racial and
ethnic minorities: African Americans, Latinos, and American Indians/
Alaskan Natives. Asian American students run the gamut, with some
subgroups forging ahead on the traditional measures of success, and
others clearly lagging.
As they devise more educationally productive ways of deﬁning and
assessing student achievement, educators also need to study closely
how different groups of students are progressing within these new
standards for success. This will require two levels of analysis. First,
each campus can study whether different groups of students are
participating equitably in programs and practices—such as ﬁrst-year
experiences, writing-intensive courses, learning communities, and
capstone experiences—that have been designed to enrich and strength-
en students’ academic achievement. On many campuses, such programs
disproportionately serve students from more advantaged backgrounds.
AAC&U | Part 3: A New Framework for Excellence

By studying the data, campuses can move toward more equitable
participation in what they determine to be their most effective
educational practices.
Second, as assessments focus more centrally on students’ milestone
and culminating performances, faculty and staff should also ask whether
all groups of students are reaching the expected level of attainment
on the essential learning outcomes. By disaggregating emerging data,
colleges and universities can hone in on the patterns and likely causes
of achievement problems and do a much better job of identifying
needed changes in curriculum, teaching quality, academic support,
and the larger educational environment.
Recommendation 15
Faculty and staff on hundreds of campuses are already implementing
elements of the Principles of Excellence outlined above. But too often
their work touches limited numbers of students or is concentrated in
a few areas of the curriculum. Those experimenting with innovative,
engaging pedagogical practices are often isolated from one another,
unaware that there are kindred spirits just around the corner. Existing
reward systems—geared almost exclusively to faculty scholarship and
the quality of individual teaching—are incompatible with the scope of
collaborative change and organizational learning that will be needed to
raise the quality of all students’ educational achievement.
A contemporary framework for educational excellence and its
assessment requires new leadership structures and incentives to
advance the intended changes. In particular, new organizational
practices are needed to both support and reward faculty and staff
efforts to foster students’ cumulative progress across different parts and
levels of the college experience.
Drawing from work by Pat Hutchings and Mary Huber of the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching,52 we propose
that each campus create its own version of a “Teaching and Learning
Commons” where faculty, administrators, and student life profession-
als can come together—across disciplinary lines—to create a culture
of shared purposes, to audit the extent to which the educational
environment is successfully advancing the expected learning for all
groups of students, and to beneﬁt from existing and new efforts to
foster student engagement and high achievement.
To foster shared purposes, each campus needs to develop its own
vision of the expected learning outcomes (see recommendation 1).
By making good use of assessment evidence from many sources, by
building widely shared knowledge about successful educational
innovations within the community, and by creating a culture of
continuous attention to these matters, the Teaching and Learning
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

Commons can probe the relations between what is intended and what
is actually happening. The commons also can serve as a continuing
catalyst for effective practices and far-reaching change. In addition,
participation in this commons can become an important way of
helping new faculty and staff translate the broad aims described in the
essential learning outcomes to their particular disciplines and roles.
The commons, in short, can play a far-reaching role, creating a culture
that consistently “aims high” and that steadfastly focuses—across
divisional lines—on campus progress toward making excellence
inclusive.
AAC&U | Part 3: A New Framework for Excellence

The educational vision presented here is a call to prepare all
students for the challenges and complexities of this new
global era. The vision builds from a widely shared recogni-
tion that in this demanding economic and international environment,
almost everyone will need further learning beyond high school, both
to expand personal opportunity and to ensure this nation’s continuing
prosperity.
The LEAP National Leadership Council takes that recognition to
a higher level, asking: What kinds of learning? To what ends? Beyond
access to college, how should Americans deﬁne “success” in college
achievement?
In answering these questions, the council urges a strong commit-
ment to provide all students—whatever their choice of institution or
career—with a liberal and liberating college education. This report
deﬁnes liberal education not in terms of speciﬁc disciplines studied,
but rather as a coherent framework for learning that intentionally
fosters, across multiple ﬁelds of study, wide-ranging knowledge of sci-
ence, cultures, and society; high-level intellectual and practical skills; an
active commitment to personal and social responsibility; and the dem-
onstrated ability to apply learning to complex problems and challenges.
The council further urges the need for a new compact between
educators and American society that focuses simultaneously on essential
learning outcomes, effective educational practices, and the integration of
learning at increasingly higher levels of accomplishment. The Principles
of Excellence articulate this broadly deﬁned educational compact.
Informed by a generation of innovation and scholarly research
on effective practices in teaching and learning, the Principles of
Excellence offer both challenging standards and ﬂexible guidance for
an era of far-reaching educational reform and renewal—in higher
education, in the schools, and in the connections between them. And
they provide a framework for assessing student learning that both
spurs and documents higher levels of student accomplishment.
With campus experimentation already well advanced—on every
one of the Principles of Excellence—it is time to move from
“pilot efforts” to full-scale commitments. Just as the United States
comprehensively transformed designs for learning, at all levels, in the
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, educators can act
now to advance a contemporary set of goals, guiding principles, and
practices that will prepare all college students—not just the fortunate
few—to reap the full beneﬁts of an engaged and empowering liberal
education.
But providing a twenty-ﬁrst-century education for all college
students cannot be done with a few adjustments on the margin.
Vigorous and concerted leadership will be needed at many levels
to build support for a more contemporary framework for college
learning and to accelerate the scope and pace of educational change.
What It Will Take
Make the Principles of Excellence a Campus Priority
Colleges, community colleges, and universities stand at the center.
Ultimately, it is their role to articulate aims and outcomes for their
degrees that both enact their mission and resonate with twenty-
ﬁrst-century realities, to provide rich opportunities for today’s diverse
students to achieve the essential learning outcomes, and to assure the
quality, scope, and level of each student’s actual achievement.
Responding to a changing environment, many institutions have
already begun to make far-reaching changes, both in deﬁning their
core educational purposes and in adopting more engaging and
effective educational practices. The vision for twenty-ﬁrst-century
learning presented in these pages reﬂects and draws on their pioneer-
ing leadership and innovation.
But across higher education as a whole, progress in deﬁning robust
educational purposes and matching vision with intentional practice
has been fragmented at best. The goal now should be to move from
partial efforts and islands of innovation to an enterprise-wide focus
that embraces the multiple parts of the undergraduate experience.
The Principles of Excellence (see p. 26) describe key steps that every
campus can take to accelerate the speed and scope of needed change.
Form Coalitions, across Sectors, for All Students’ Long-Term Interests
While the value of strong educational leadership on each individual
campus cannot be overstated, raising the quality of student learning
across the board will ultimately require concerted and collective
action—between educators and society, and across the various levels
of education. Collaborative action is needed because the impediments
to educational excellence are systemic rather than isolated. Many
high school graduates are underprepared for college, and so higher
education is forced to play catch-up. Students need to develop higher-
level intellectual and practical skills, but the curriculum in both school
and college has been deﬁned, often by state regulation, in terms of
course titles and categories, with much too little attention to students’
development of important capabilities.
Democracy, global and intercultural learning, active citizenship,
AAC&U | Part 4: A Time for Leadership and Action

and even the skills and knowledge essential to economic innovation
remain low priorities at all levels of the educational system because
of regulatory and assessment frameworks that largely ignore these
crucial areas of learning (see p. 20, ﬁg. 6). Faculty reward systems almost
invariably emphasize individual rather than collaborative excellence in
both scholarship and teaching, which results in systemic disincentives
for faculty members to spend their time in the collaborative redesign
of undergraduate education.
The other great systemic impediment to educational reform is the
marketplace. When a single college or university independently raises
its entrance requirements, or holds students to more rigorous gradua-
tion standards in, say, science, mathematics, languages, or global learn-
ing, students remain entirely free to take their tuition dollars to another
institution that has set less taxing standards. Very few institutions are in
a position to stand forth—alone—against these market realities.
For all these reasons, leaders will need to work collectively across
institutional boundaries as well as within them to create a market
environment that expects educational excellence and that both
supports and rewards collaborative work to achieve it.
Many campus leaders already are working at a local level with
partner schools to raise the level of college readiness and achievement.
But like so much else in the contemporary educational landscape,
these are piecemeal, “add-on” efforts that have not yet resulted in
far-reaching systemic change. The next step is to move toward
collective efforts to broaden public and student understanding about
essential learning and to establish higher operative standards across
the board for college readiness and college accomplishment. By
taking an active role in systemic change efforts at all levels—national,
state, and local—colleges and universities can better serve both their
students and society, and advance their own institutional interests in
educational excellence as well.
Build Principled and Determined Leadership
Because the barriers to excellence are systemic, educating American
students for today’s challenging environment will require proactive
and determined leadership as well as coordinated efforts across all parts
of American society and all parts of the educational system. While
everyone has a role to play in this effort, three forms of enabling lead-
ership will be absolutely essential to champion, support, guide, and
reward the hard work of fostering higher levels of achievement across
the board: (1) high-proﬁle advocacy from presidents, trustees, school
leaders, and employers; (2) curricular leadership from knowledgeable
scholars and teachers; and (3) policy leadership at multiple levels to
support and reward a new framework for educational excellence.
1. High-proﬁle advocacy from presidents, trustees, school leaders,
and employers. Recognized leaders who can command public respect
and attention must step forward to explain the value and importance
of liberal education—in twenty-ﬁrst-century terms—both to democ-
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

racy and the economy, and to deploy needed resources to support
educational change. Traditionally, presidents, trustees, and school lead-
ers have focused on the needs and priorities of their own institu-
tions. But today, these highly visible and inﬂuential leaders need to
situate both their public statements and their institutional priorities
in a much larger educational context. By using their public pulpits
effectively, these inﬂuential leaders can build new commitment to a
liberating education for all students and new understanding of what
will be required to achieve that goal.
Presidents, school leaders, trustees, and leading employers, more
than anyone else, are in a position to make the essential learning out-
comes a shared national priority and to promote the value of more
purposeful connections at all levels of the educational system. And,
as campus and school leaders cultivate new public understanding of
what matters in college, they can also turn a much-needed spotlight
on the public value and signiﬁcance of their own campus efforts to
raise the quality of student accomplishment.
2. Curricular leadership from knowledgeable scholars and teachers.
While recognized leaders can make higher achievement a priority,
faculty and teachers who work directly with students are the only
ones who can make it actually happen.
Scholar-teachers who have standing within the educational com-
munity will need to take the lead—in partnerships across school and
college—to develop guidelines and curricula that connect rich content
with students’ progressive mastery of essential skills and competencies.
There is already a strong policy interest in creating “seamless align-
ments” between school and college and in setting higher standards
for “college readiness.” Building on these existing efforts, faculty and
teachers can work together, across the usual school–college dividing
lines, to deﬁne ascending levels of expected student achievement
and to map more purposeful curricular pathways, across different
disciplines, that support the expected levels of learning.
Some of this work has already begun, often off the public radar
screen. National and state efforts to move from pilot projects to sys-
temic change can draw from countless examples of good practice, in the
schools and in higher education. The challenge now is to bring disparate
efforts together—nationally, regionally, and locally—around a shared
vision for essential learning outcomes that encompasses diverse ﬁelds
and ascending levels of learning. Equally important, we need to ensure
that future teachers and future faculty are well prepared to teach in ways
that help students reach a higher level of knowledge and capability.
3. Policy leadership at multiple levels to support and reward a new
framework for educational excellence. Leaders in the states, in accredita-
tion agencies, in P–16 initiatives, in educational associations, and on
individual campuses have already launched noteworthy (if partial) ef-
forts to foster the learning needed for the twenty-ﬁrst century. But
very few of them have recognized that the Truman-era determination
to squeeze all the goals for liberal education into a dozen or so col-
lege-level general education courses is an unworkable strategy that now
AAC&U | Part 4: A Time for Leadership and Action

stands in the way of a more productive focus on students’ cumulative
and integrative learning across the curriculum. Breaking free of this
inherited educational cul-de-sac, policy leaders should act together
to support faculty and teacher efforts to map the broad aims and
outcomes of an empowering liberal education across the entire educa-
tional experience, from school through college—including community
colleges—and across majors as well as general education. By supporting
twenty-ﬁrst-century expectations for students’ cumulative accomplish-
ment and by crafting policies that support and reward needed change,
policy leaders can create a far more productive environment for new
educational creativity and for the integration of learning at all levels.
Put Employers in Direct Dialogue with Students
Employers have an especially inﬂuential role to play in changing
student and public understanding about what matters in college.
Students already know that a college degree is a passport to expanded
economic opportunity. What they need to hear now from their
future employers is that narrow learning will limit rather than expand
their opportunities. Within their own forums, employers have already
championed the value and economic importance of the essential
learning outcomes. But students aren’t in those forums and many have
missed that message entirely.
Employers are already aligned with educators in their recognition
that students need an expansive and versatile education rather than
narrow training alone. Now, employers—who may also be trustees
and regents in both public and private higher education—can join
forces with educational leaders to put students in the loop as well.
Employers ought to become both visible and audible, explaining on
campus Web sites, at career fairs, and even on students’ iPods why the
essential learning outcomes will prove important beyond college.
Employers already work in tandem with higher education through
their campus recruiting efforts, their mentoring and internship
programs, their advisory work with faculty and campus programs, and
their philanthropic contributions. Employers can use each of these
venues to signal their preference for liberal rather than narrow educa-
tion and the practical value of the essential learning outcomes.
If senior executives, human resources leaders, and campus recruit-
ers insist on the importance of cross-cutting knowledge and versatile
intellectual skills, then students will have much stronger incentives to
work toward their achievement.
Reclaim the Connection between Liberal Education and
Democratic Freedom
Americans are a practical people who understand very well the connection
between prosperity and democratic freedom. But as a society, we need to
reclaim the insight—well explained by our founders—that freedom is not
self-perpetuating. Democracy may be a birthright, but citizens need to be
educated about what is involved in sustaining that birthright.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

The ﬁrst lesson in that education should be new clarity about the
root meaning of liber, the Latin word for a free person. In Ameri-
can society, liberal education has evolved as the kind of education
necessary to a free people: to self-governance and democracy. But
liberal education has never lived up to the full promise of democracy
because this society has never before attempted to provide a liberating
education for all Americans.
Moving forward in this new global century, we have a historic
opportunity to redeem that promise by making educational excel-
lence newly inclusive. The essential learning outcomes described in
these pages are important to the economy, certainly. But they are
even more important to American democracy. As Americans mobilize
determined leadership for educational reform—from presidents,
trustees, school leaders, faculty, teachers, staff, employers, policy
makers, and everyone else—we need to put the future of democracy
at the center of our efforts.
An educational program that is indifferent to democracy will
ultimately deplete it. But a democracy united around a shared
commitment to excellence for everyone is this nation’s best investment
in our shared future.
Liberal Education and America’s Promise
While college has become a gateway to opportunity in American
society, it is not a magic carpet. Ultimately, it is the quality of learning,
not the possession of a diploma, that will make all the difference—to
individuals, to an economy dependent upon innovation, and to the
integrity of the democracy we create together.
The proposals offered here build on the historic strengths of higher
education in the United States, especially the academy’s commitment
to inclusion and excellence, its sense of responsibility to the larger
society, its embrace of democratic principles and values, and its record of
achievement in advancing innovative solutions to important problems.
With this report, the LEAP National Leadership Council urges
a comprehensive commitment, not just to prepare all students for
college, but to provide the most powerful forms of learning for all
who enroll in college.
Working together, with determination, creativity, and a larger sense
of shared purpose, Americans can fulﬁll the promise of a liberating
college education—for every student and for America’s future.
AAC&U | Part 4: A Time for Leadership and Action

Vision
The institution—through dialogue with the wider community—articulates a vision for student
accomplishment that addresses the essential learning outcomes and the Principles of Excellence
in ways appropriate to mission, students, and educational programs.
Resources
Campus leaders—including presidents, trustees, and senior leaders—advance this vision through
their strategic planning, fundraising, resource allocation, and stafﬁng.
Integrative Learning
The institution creates an intellectual commons where faculty and staff work together to connect the
essential outcomes with the content and practices of their educational programs, including general
education, departmental majors, the cocurriculum, and assessments.
Intentional Students
The institution teaches students how to integrate the essential learning outcomes within a
purposeful, coherent, and carefully sequenced plan of study.
Accomplishment
Faculty and staff work to develop student knowledge and capabilities cumulatively and sequentially,
drawing on all types of courses—from general education and the majors to electives—as well as
non-course experiences.
Evidence
Faculty and staff members work together—across courses and programs—to assess students’
cumulative progress, to audit the connections between intended learning and student accomplish-
ment, to share ﬁndings about effective educational practices, and to advance needed change.
Recognition
Faculty and staff reward systems are organized to support collaborative work—“our work”—as well
as individual excellence, and to foster a culture of shared focus and collaborative inquiry about
students’ progress and cumulative learning across the multiple parts of the college experience.

The following teaching and learning practices have been widely tested and
have shown beneﬁts for college students, especially those from historically
underserved backgrounds.53 Because they feature various forms of active
learning, these innovative educational practices also are especially well suited
for assessing students’ cumulative learning. However, on almost all campuses,
these practices remain optional rather than essential.
First-Year Seminars and Experiences
Many schools now build into the curriculum ﬁrst-year seminars or other
programs that bring small groups of students together with faculty or staff
on a regular basis. Typically, ﬁrst-year experiences place a strong emphasis on
critical inquiry, frequent writing, information literacy, collaborative learning,
and other skills that develop students’ intellectual and practical competen-
cies. First-year seminars can involve students with cutting-edge questions in
scholarship and with faculty members’ own research.
Common Intellectual Experiences
The older idea of a “core” curriculum has evolved into a variety of modern
forms such as a set of required common courses, or a vertically organized
general education program that includes advanced integrative studies and/or
required participation in a learning community (see below). These programs
often combine broad themes—e.g., technology and society, or global interde-
pendence—with a variety of curricular and cocurricular options for students.
Learning Communities
The key goals for learning communities are to encourage integration
of learning across courses and to involve students with “big questions” that
matter beyond the classroom. Students take two or more linked courses as a
group and work closely with one another and with their professors. Many
learning communities explore a common topic and/or common readings
through the lenses of different disciplines. Some deliberately link “liberal arts”
and “professional courses”; others feature service learning (see below).
Writing-Intensive Courses
These courses emphasize writing at all levels of instruction and across the
curriculum, including ﬁnal-year projects. Students are encouraged to produce
and revise various forms of writing for different audiences in different
disciplines. The effectiveness of this repeated practice “across the curriculum”
has led to parallel efforts in such areas as quantitative reasoning, oral com-
munication, information literacy, and on some campuses, ethical inquiry.
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

Collaborative Assignments and Projects
Collaborative learning combines two key goals: learning to work and solve
problems in the company of others, and sharpening one’s own understand-
ing by listening seriously to the insights of others, especially those with
different backgrounds and life experiences. Approaches range from forming
study groups within a course, to team-based assignments and writing, to
cooperative projects and research.
“Science as Science Is Done”/ Undergraduate Research
With strong support from the National Science Foundation and the research
community, scientists are reshaping their courses to connect key concepts and
questions with students’ early and active involvement in systematic investi-
gation and research. The goal is to involve students with actively contested
questions, empirical observation, cutting-edge technologies, and the sense of
excitement that comes from working to answer important questions. These
reforms are part of a broader movement to provide research experiences for
students in all disciplines.
Diversity/Global Learning
Many colleges and universities now emphasize courses and programs that
help students explore cultures, life experiences, and worldviews different
from their own. These studies—which may address U.S. diversity, world
cultures, or both—often explore “difﬁcult differences” such as racial, ethnic,
and gender inequality, or continuing struggles around the globe for human
rights, freedom, and power. Frequently, intercultural studies are augmented
by experiential learning in the community and/or by study abroad.
Service Learning, Community-Based Learning
In these programs, ﬁeld-based “experiential learning” with community
partners is an instructional strategy—and often a required part of the course.
The idea is to give students direct experience with issues they are studying
in the curriculum and with ongoing efforts to analyze and solve problems in
the community. These programs model the idea that giving something back
to the community is an important college outcome, and that working with
community partners is good preparation for citizenship, work, and life.
Internships
Internships are another increasingly common form of experiential
learning. The idea is to provide students with direct experience in a work
setting—usually related to their career interests—and to give them the
beneﬁt of supervision and coaching from professionals in the ﬁeld. If the
internship is taken for “course credit,” students complete a project or paper
that is approved by a faculty member.
Capstone Courses and Projects
Whether they’re called “senior capstones” or some other name, these culmi-
nating experiences require students nearing the end of their college years to
create a project of some sort that integrates and applies what they’ve learned.
The project might be a research paper, a performance, a portfolio of “best
work,” or an exhibit of artwork. Capstones are offered both in departmental
programs and, increasingly, in general education as well.
AAC&U | Appendix A: A Guide to Effective Educational Practices

Although only about 5 percent of students attend for-proﬁt or commercial
colleges and universities, these types of schools make up 47 percent of the
postsecondary institutions in the United States.54 Much like businesses, these
colleges can be bought and sold, and their proﬁts—which are about 15 per-
cent55—are taxed like those of other proﬁt-making entities. Most for-proﬁts
operate at less than $50 million a year, though a few notable names have
revenues of more than $100 million: Kaplan; University of Phoenix’s parent
company, the Apollo Group; and about ten other such companies. There are
more than four thousand commercial colleges in the United States.
About half of the students enrolled in commercial colleges come from
minority communities. Many are adults who did not begin a bachelor’s
program immediately after high school. As Guilbert Hentschke from the
Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California ob-
serves, because they “are motivated more by the market than by academics,
for-proﬁts are likely to focus on the programs for employment sectors with
high demand. . . . The traditional liberal arts education is not on the menu.”
The number of for-proﬁt colleges has grown very rapidly—particularly
COMMENTARY
from 1990 to 2000, when there was a more than 100 percent increase in
“Proprietary colleges often do
for-proﬁt campuses. And from 1995 to 2000, enrollment increased by 52
not require much general educa-
percent. Much of this growth can be attributed to the largest of the for-prof-
tion. In fact, they often promote
its, but all these schools are growing, in part as a result of the “short-cycle”
themselves by emphasizing that
degrees they offer and the strong focus on job placement after graduation.
students do not have to take
Because of this focus on job placement, much of the curriculum at
courses in the social sciences or
humanities. The institutions may
for-proﬁt institutions is driven by how “in-demand” a given employment
require applied communications
sector or job is at that time. Most commercial colleges, as a result, offer a
and mathematics courses, but the
relatively small number of programs that give students speciﬁc skills for a
operative word is ‘applied.’”
predetermined career choice.
The average cost of attendance at commercial colleges is relatively high
compared to public two-year and four-year institutions. One source of fund-
ing is the Pell Grant program, which provides need-based grants to low-
income students. In 2000–2001, 1,918 for-proﬁt institutions participated in
the Pell Grant program, comprising approximately 35 percent of the total
number of participating institutions. In the same year, for-proﬁt institutions
received 14 percent of the total Pell Grant funds available to low-income
students,56 while enrolling about 5 percent of students in the United States.
In 2003–4, students in commercial colleges in New York State made up
4.3 percent of all college students, but received about 25 percent of federal
and state tuition assistance grants and about half of federally guaranteed
student loans.57
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

AAC&U | Appendix B: A Guide to Commercial Colleges

1.
The Education Trust–West,
(Oakland, CA: The Education Trust–West, 2002), 5.
2.
National Center for Education Statistics,
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2006), 66.
3.
Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans,
, 2005–2006 (Alexandria, VA: Horatio Alger Association of
Distinguished Americans, 2005), 17.
4.
Clifford Adelman, “The Propaganda of Numbers,”
, October 13, 2006. Adelman takes issue with the widely publicized
ﬁgure that shows bachelor’s and associate’s degree attainment—ten years
after beginning high school—languishing at 18 percent. Adelman points to the
congruence between ﬁgures from the U.S. Census Bureau and the ﬁndings
from a longitudinal study of eighth graders’ transcripts from 1988 through
2000 conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, which shows
that 35 percent of that student cohort had attained either a bachelor’s degree
or an associate’s degree by 2000, with 28 or 29 percent holding bachelor’s de-
grees. See also U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2006 Annual
Social and Economic Supplement.
5.
By age twenty-four, 75 percent of students from the top income quartile receive
bachelor’s degrees, while less than 9 percent of those from the bottom quar-
tile do so. “Family Income and Higher Education Opportunity 1970 to 2003,”
, no. 156 (2005). For racial disparities in
degree attainment, see U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Edu-
cation Statistics,
(Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Ofﬁce, 2006), Table 31-3. For an overall analysis, see Kati
Haycock,
(Washington, DC: The Education Trust, 2006).
6.
In September 2005, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced
the formation of the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of
Higher Education and charged it with developing a comprehensive national
strategy for postsecondary education. In September 2006, the commission
issued its report,
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2006).
7.
Derek Bok,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2006).
8.
Clifford Adelman, “‘Global Preparedness’ of Pre-9/11 College Graduates: What
the U.S. Longitudinal Studies Say,”
10
(2004): 243–60.
9.
The Conference Board, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Corporate
Voices for Working Families, and the Society for Human Resource
Management,
(New York: The Conference Board, 2006).
10.
See, for example, Building Engineering and Science Talent,
(San
Diego, CA: BEST, 2003); Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of
the 21st Century: An Agenda for American Science and Technology, National
Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine,
(Washington, DC: The National Academies Press,
2006); Council on Competitiveness,
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

(Washington, DC: Council on Competitiveness, 2005);
and Duke University,
(Durham, NC: Duke
University, 2005).
11.
The more rigorous the high school curriculum taken, the more likely students
are to enroll in a four-year institution and ultimately achieve a bachelor’s
degree. Clifford Adelman,
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of
Education, 2006). But many students do not take a strong college preparatory
curriculum in high school. Probing this issue in more detail, scholars at the
National Center for Educational Statistics identiﬁed three levels of high school
curriculum taken by students enrolling directly in a four-year college or univer-
sity in 1995–96. The three levels of study included (1)
four years of English, three years of mathematics, three years of
science, and three years of social studies—one third of the study group took
this or less; (2)
: includes all components of the Core but expands to
include Algebra I and geometry, at least one year of a foreign language, and
at least two of the science courses chosen from biology, chemistry, or phys-
ics—taken by half the students; (3)
includes all compo-
nents of Mid-Level, a fourth year of mathematics (including precalculus or
higher), biology, chemistry, and physics, and at least one Advanced Placement
course—taken by 19 percent. Three years after enrolling in college, 79 percent
of those who took the Rigorous Curriculum were continuously enrolled in their
initial institutions, compared with 55 percent of those who took the Core Cur-
riculum and 62 percent of those who took the Mid-Level. High school course-
taking patterns were stratiﬁed by income and by racial/ethnic background, but
completing a rigorous curriculum predicted college success even with controls
for background. The study did not include community college students. Laura
J. Horn and Lawrence K. Kojaku,
(Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2001).
12.
Peter D. Hart Research Associates,
(Washington, DC:
Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 2004), 6. This research was conducted for
the LEAP initiative.
13.
Ellen M. Bradburn, Rachael Berger, Xiaojie Li, Katharin Peter, and Kathryn
Rooney,
(Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2003).
14.
Laura Horn and Stephanie Nevill,
2003–2004 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department
of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2006), 87, table 3.3.
15.
Research on the beneﬁts of active and engaged learning is voluminous.
Engagement as a “key to student success” is summarized and grounded in
campus case studies in George D. Kuh, Jillian Kinzie, John H. Schuh, Elizabeth
J. Whitt, and Associates,
(San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2005). Results of a study testing
the active learning ﬁndings in liberal arts education are reported by Ernest
T. Pascarella, Gregory C. Wolniak, Tricia A. D. Seifert, Ty M. Cruce, and Charles
F. Blaich in
, ASHE Higher Education Report vol. 31, no. 3 (San Francisco, CA:
Jossey–Bass, 2005). See also Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini,
(San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass, 2005). For research on the beneﬁts of speciﬁc educational
practices, see note 53.
AAC&U | Notes

16.
George D. Kuh, Jillian Kinzie, Ty Cruce, Rick Shoup, and Robert M. Gonyea,
“Connecting the Dots: Multi-Faceted Analyses of the Relationships Between
Student Engagement Results from the NSSE, and the Institutional Practices
and Conditions that Foster Student Success” (Indiana University, Bloomington,
2006); Kenneth I. Maton and Freeman A. Hrabowski III, “Increasing the Number
of African American PhDs in the Sciences and Engineering: A Strengths-Based
Approach,”
59, no. 6 (2004), 547–56. For an analysis of
the extent of minority and low-income student participation, see Kathleen M.
Goodman, Tricia A. Seifert, James D. Jorgensen, Ernest T. Pascarella, Gregory
C. Wolniak, Charles F. Blaich, and Carol Geary Schneider, “How Do Race and
Socioeconomic Background Inﬂuence Experiences of Good Practices in Un-
dergraduate Education?” (Paper presented at the Association for the Study of
Higher Education Annual Conference, Anaheim, CA, November 4, 2006).
17.
President’s Commission on Higher Education,
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce, 1947), 49.
18.
Peter D. Hart Research Associates,
(Washington, DC: Peter D. Hart Research Associ-
ates, 2006); Peter D. Hart Research Associates,
(Washing-
ton, DC: Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 2004). Both studies were conduct-
ed for the LEAP initiative. Focus group participants produced their own written
deﬁnitions of the term “liberal education” prior to discussion of the topic.
19.
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics . . . reports that even those born at the tail
end of the baby boom held an average of 10.2 jobs between ages 18 and 38,
from 1978 to 2002. A 2004 study by the Families and Work Institute, a
nonproﬁt research group, polled Generation Y employees and found they
were signiﬁcantly more likely to leave their jobs than employees who were
their comparable ages in 1977—70 percent, compared with 52 percent.” Anna
Bahney, “A Life Between Jobs,”
, June 8, 2006.
20.
Roberts T. Jones, “Liberal Education for the Twenty-ﬁrst Century: Business
Expectations,”
91, no. 2 (2005): 32–37.
21.
Norman R. Augustine, “Learning to Lose? Our Education System Isn’t Ready
for a World of Competition,”
, December 6, 2005.
22.
Business–Higher Education Forum,
(Washington, DC: Business–Higher Education Forum, 1999), 7.
23.
Peter D. Hart Research Associates,
(Washington, DC: Peter D. Hart Research
Associates, 2006), 1.
24.
Keith Peden, personal communication, 2006.
25.
This point was made repeatedly by employers participating in focus groups
convened for the LEAP initiative and also in the more than two dozen campus–
community dialogues about goals for college learning that were convened by
AAC&U and partner colleges and universities between fall 2002 and 2004.
26.
Steven Brint, Mark Riddle, Lori Turk-Bicakci, and Charles S. Levy, “From the
Liberal to the Practical Arts in American Colleges and Universities: Organiza-
tional Analysis and Curricular Change,”
76, no.
2 (2005): 151–80. Reﬂecting the twentieth-century division of higher learning
into liberal arts versus professional categories, analyses of liberal education
usually take as a proxy the percentage of graduates who major in one of the
arts and sciences disciplines and/or the percentage of students who attend
institutions that offer an arts and sciences curriculum primarily. Using the
former template, this study reviews American college students’ relative prefer-
ence from 1915 to 2000 for “liberal arts” versus the occupational–professional
majors. The study shows that, over the course of the century, majoring in the
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

liberal arts and sciences became increasingly concentrated in the “selective
baccalaureate-granting institutions and other institutions with strong aca-
demic proﬁles, as measured by average SAT/ACT scores.” What was originally
a functional divide between different kinds of learning “
” (emphasis added). Institutions enrolling students with lower
test scores and family income generally emphasize occupational–professional
studies. The longitudinal analysis shows that the arts and sciences ﬁelds began
to slip from their dominant position in terms of degrees granted just before the
Great Depression, then regained lost ground in the 1960s, rising to 55
percent of degrees granted, before slipping back again. In recent years, about
58 percent of baccalaureate degrees have been awarded in occupational–
professional programs.
27.
ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission,
(Baltimore, MD: 2004). ABET, which accredits nearly
two thousand engineering programs at more than 350 institutions, adopted
an outcomes-based strategy for accreditation in 1996, with the publication of
.
28.
“Among public high schools that year [2002–3], NCES [National Center for
Education Statistics] estimated enrollments at 1.2 million for dual credit
courses, 1.8 million for AP courses, and 165,000 for IB courses.” The Western
Interstate Commission for Higher Education,
(Boulder, CO: Western Interstate
Commission for Higher Education, 2006), 2.
29.
Clifford Adelman,
(Washington, DC: Institute for Education
Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2004), 87.
30. See note 8 above and ﬁgure 1 on page 8.
31.
Jon D. Miller, “Civic Scientiﬁc Literacy: A Necessity in the 21st Century,”
55, no. 1 (2002): 3–6. A political scientist at Northwestern
University, Miller has devised a measure of “civic scientiﬁc literacy” that in-
cludes three dimensions: (1) an understanding of basic scientiﬁc concepts and
constructs, such as the molecule, DNA, and the structure of the solar system;
(2) an understanding of the nature and process of scientiﬁc inquiry; and (3) a
pattern of regular information consumption about scientiﬁc topics and devel-
opments. By 1999, studies using these measures concluded that approximately
17 percent of Americans demonstrate scientiﬁc literacy at this “civic” level,
up from 10 percent a decade earlier. The strongest predictor of civic scientiﬁc
literacy is the number of college-level science courses taken.
32. See note 10.
33.
Peter D. Hart Research Associates,
(Washington, DC:
Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 2004).
34.
Martha Nussbaum,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
35.
Azar Naﬁsi, “The Republic of the Imagination,”
, December 5,
2004.
36.
National Center for Education Statistics,
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2005), table 213.
37.
National Center for Education Statistics,
. (Washington, DC:
U.S. Department of Education, 2005).
38. See note 13.
39.
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics,
AAC&U | Notes

(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce). For beginning students
of all ages, 45.4 percent start at community colleges and 4.5 percent at other
two-year schools. For beginning students twenty years old and younger, 40.9
percent start at community colleges and 3.4 percent at other two-year schools.
40.
John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking, eds.,
(Washington, DC: National
Academies Press, 1999).
41. See note 28.
42.
“Over 90 percent of college students age 19 at the beginning of the 2000–01
school year worked at an employee job at some time during that academic
year and following summer, with the vast majority working during both the
school year and the summer.” National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, www.bls.
gov/nls.
43.
Lee S. Shulman, “Pedagogies of Uncertainty,”
91, no. 2
(2005): 18–25.
44.
Jack Meacham and Jerry G. Gaff, “Learning Goals in Mission Statements: Im-
plications for Educational Leadership,”
92, no. 1 (2006): 6–13.
45.
On the effects of service learning, see Alexander Astin, “Liberal Education and
Democracy: The Case for Pragmatism,” in
, ed. Robert Orrill (New York: College Board,
1997); Maryann Jacobi Gray, et al.
(New York: The RAND Corporation, 1999). On the effects of diversity
experiences, see Angelo N. Ancheta and Christopher F. Edley, Jr., “Brief of the
American Educational Research Association, the Association of American Col-
leges and Universities, and the American Association for Higher Education as
in Support of Respondents,” in
(Washington,
DC: United States Supreme Court, 2003). On the effects of diversity learning
and civic engagement, see Patricia Gurin, Eric L. Dey, Sylvia Hurtado, and Ger-
ald Gurin, “Diversity and Higher Education: Theory and Impact on Educational
Outcomes,”
72 (2002): 330–67.
46.
Association of American Colleges and Universities,
(Washington, DC:
Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2005), 5.
47.
Norman Nie and Sunshine Hillygus, “Education and Democratic Citizenship,”
in
, Diane Ravitch and
Joseph Viteritti, eds. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).
48.
U.S. Department of Education,
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2006).
49.
Lee S. Shulman, “Principles for the Uses of Assessment in Policy and Prac-
tice: President’s Report to the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching,” 2006, www.teaglefoundation.org/learning/
pdf/2006_shulman_assessment.pdf.
50.
Richard J. Shavelson,
(Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and
Universities, forthcoming).
51.
National Survey of Student Engagement,
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Center for Postsecondary Research, 2005).
52.
Mary Taylor Huber and Pat Hutchings,
(San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2005).
53.
An extensive literature has established the value for students of active, en-
Liberal Education & America’s Promise | AAC&U

gaged, and collaborative forms of learning. The effective educational practices
described in appendix A reﬂect more than two decades of work on campus
to translate these broad research ﬁndings into curriculum and pedagogy.
The recommended practices, while not exhaustive, provide a “cornerstone to
capstone” framing that potentially fosters active intellectual engagement and
practice across the entire educational experience. Research ﬁndings on the ben-
eﬁts of ﬁrst-year experiences, learning communities, diversity learning, service
learning, undergraduate research, and collaborative/cooperative learning are
summarized in Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini,
(San Francisco, CA: Jossey-
Bass, 2005). For the value of a common intellectual experience in general
education, see Alexander W. Astin,
(San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1993), 331–32, 424–28. For the value
of writing-intensive courses, see Richard J. Light,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2001), 54–62; Derek Bok,
(Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2006), 82–101. For experiential learning, see John
D. Bransford, Ann. L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking, eds.,
(Washington, DC: National Academies
Press, 1999); K. Patricia Cross,
(Phoenix, AZ: League for Innovation in the Community
Colleges, June, 1999). For “science as science is done,” see Judith A. Ramaley
and Rosemary R. Haggett, “Engaged and Engaging Science: A Component of a
Good Liberal Education,
7, no. 2 (2005), 8–12; Eugenia Etkina, Jose
P. Mestre, and Angela M. O’Donnell, “The Impact of the Cognitive Revolution on
Science Learning and Teaching,” in
, James M. Royer, ed. (Greenwich, CT: Information Age, 2005),
119–64. While the research on capstone experiences is scant, Pascarella and
Terenzini report that “[intellectual development] is stimulated by academic
experiences that purposefully provide for . . . integration.”
(San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass, 1991), 619. See also
, 608. For two inﬂuential summaries that helped to
accelerate campus-based work on engaged and active learning and its assess-
ment, see Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in American Higher
Education,
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of
Education, 1984); Arthur W. Chickering and Zelda F. Gamson, eds.,
, New Directions
for Teaching and Learning, no. 47 (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1991). The
National Study of Student Engagement provides a set of metrics that enables a
campus to indicate the extent to which its students are participating in various
forms of active practice, such as extensive writing, integrative learning
assignments, and capstone/culminating projects.
54.
Unless otherwise noted, all data presented in the appendix are drawn from
Guilbert C. Hentschke, “U.S. For-Proﬁt Postsecondary Institutions—Departure or
Extension?”
no. 35 (Spring 2004): 15–16.
55.
Blumenstyk, Goldie, “Why For-Proﬁt Colleges Are Like Health Clubs,”
, May 5, 2006.
56.
Jacqueline E. King,
(Washington,
DC: American Council on Education Center for Policy Analysis, 2003), 9.
57.
Karen Arensen, “Report Calls for Tighter Rules on Proﬁt-Making Colleges,”
, May 22, 2006.
AAC&U | Notes