(Editor’s note: Dr. Neilson is the President of Covenant College; the following article is from his blog.)

A couple of months ago, my wife and I traveled to watch a Covenant men’s soccer match – a purposeful and delightful journey as our son David was playing defensive midfielder in his senior season on the team.

During breakfast at the bed-and-breakfast where we stayed, we met a couple who both work for a Fortune 500 company and who, upon learning that I am president of a college, asked me what I thought about the preparedness of today’s college graduates for work in the world.

The context for their question was that, although their company recruits from the very “best” colleges and universities, the college degree seemed to them to guarantee virtually nothing about what these graduates know or are able to do – and this with respect not only to business knowledge and competencies but also to more general abilities to speak and write well and to work effectively with others. They also noted that today’s graduates have little sense of the wider world and its significant systems (economic, political, social, cultural, etc.). The company’s training programs, therefore, assume almost nothing except simple reading skills.

This couple’s observation is not theirs alone: According to a recent survey of employers, only 24% of today’s college graduates are “excellently prepared” for even entry-level positions.

While there may be multiple reasons for the weak condition of graduates’ preparedness, one important factor may be the increasingly nonprescriptive curricula of American colleges and universities. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni recently released “What Will They Learn: A Report on the General Education Requirements at 100 of the Leading Colleges and Universities,” which graded these institutions on their course requirements in seven key subjects: English composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics, and science. Forty-two of the 100 received a grade of “D” or “F” for requiring courses in two or fewer of these subjects, with twenty-five receiving “Fs” for one or no such courses. (For more information, go to http://whatwilltheylearn.com.)

Even among institutions which, for general subject areas like literature and history and science, have “distribution requirements” to satisfy which students can choose from among a group of courses, the listed courses for each area are often so varied in topic and depth that virtually no common understanding and competency can be ensured. In fact students are graduating with huge gaps in their knowledge.

It’s no wonder that diplomas from such institutions carry less and less assurance for employers, and it should be no wonder that those who pay for such education – through tuition, public funds, and donations – are asking more questions and expecting more accountability.

The concept of core academic requirements is built on the underlying view that, by the time of graduation, every student should have read and studied a common body of knowledge, and should have learned a common set of competencies. Such common knowledge and competency are essential, the argument goes, for someone to be a truly educated person and to be prepared for the complex challenges of living and working effectively in our world.

Curricular requirements constructed on such a premise will look much different from those in settings where, as one college catalog puts it, “each student must design a program of study suited to individual interests and needs.”

Covenant’s core academic requirements are intentionally designed to provide the common understanding and competency to which I’ve just referred. Here are the sections from our Philosophy of Education statement which describe the character of our core curriculum:

The Core Curriculum
Important implications of our approach to Christian education are reflected in the concept of the core curriculum. During the course of their four years, students must choose to focus on a particular area of study in order to develop the basic skills needed for a successful apprenticeship in their chosen major. While these choices are important and necessary, many of the skills and understandings that students need are common across the disciplines and are the focus of the core curriculum. Therefore all students are required to take a set of courses designated as the core. This curriculum serves student growth in at least four ways.
• It nurtures the academic skills and presents background knowledge needed for achievement in all the specialized disciplines. The learning experience in core courses involves critical reading and discussion, analytic thinking, and evaluative writing on a broad range of cultural issues; these activities are intended to sharpen and deepen students’ skills for the more advanced courses.
• The broad scope of the core acquaints students with the rudiments of many different disciplines and offers students opportunities to reflect on the wide-ranging ways that God works within his magnificent creation. Such a panoramic view is important not only for a more complete Christian understanding of the world, but it also serves as a spring-board for many students to discover how their own interests and talents fit into the full spectrum of God’s calling for His people. This in turn helps students to make better-informed choices about how to narrow the development of their academic gifts.
• The interdisciplinary nature of the core helps students to see connections between disciplines. Also, they learn how knowledge which seeks to be faithful to God’s creation reflects an integrative worldview which is not fragmented but is unified and interrelated, such that our religious commitments are a connecting and underlying thread through all our knowing, being, and doing.
• The content of the core, a wide-ranging historical-cultural understanding of the relation of faith to the world, also aids in preparing students to serve in many communities and to meet a diversity of needs that they might not have otherwise recognized.

Note the statement’s clear reference not only to the academic merits and vocational usefulness of this approach, but also to the inherent connection of this approach with our theological convictions about God and his creation: Through our core curriculum, our aim is to help students discover the wonders of the many dimensions of God’s world and understand the interconnections among those dimensions, so that they become equipped to work integratively across all the contexts of their lives.

Such an approach runs against the grain of a culture in which many do not wish to be told what they need to learn and know. We should not miss the irony of the prevailing dogma that there is no dogma, of a generation indoctrinated with the view that there should be no indoctrination. At Covenant, walking as we do, with gratitude and devotion, on the pathway of biblical, Reformed Christianity and in the heritage of faithful Christian scholarship, we say to our students, “Here is what you must know and understand in order to be an educated Christian and to be prepared for fruitful work and service, to the glory of God.”

Without apology, we declare that this is the heart of our mission, and we are delighted that students and families all around the world choose to join us in this worthwhile task.

To view Dr. Nielson’s blog, click here.

[Editor’s note: The link (URL) to the author’s blog is unavailable and has been removed.]