An experiment at Southern Utah University is set to find out the answer to this question.

Paul Fain reports at Inside Higher Ed.

Eight Professors, 43 Students

The way most colleges teach general education to undergraduates is hopelessly broken, according to a group of professors and administrators at Southern Utah University.

Introductory-level courses typically are designed to be the first in a series for students who eventually major in that discipline. But their relevance to nonmajor, general education students is far less apparent, said Scott Wyatt, Southern Utah’s president.

Those students tend to get buried in specialized material, he said, like vocabulary that becomes a framework for future courses. And the scattershot, buffet model to general education courses means much of the material students learn is not connected to a coherent, holistic curriculum.

“This is the worst part of your educational experience,” said Wyatt. “We’re pushing it out on the margins.”

Yet despite calls by many to improve general education, including a decades-long push by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, colleges have an incentive not to mess with status quo. That’s because general education courses are generally cheap to teach.

Those courses lack expensive laboratories and often are taught in huge lecture halls. So a classroom of 500 students in Psychology 101, particularly when taught by adjuncts or graduate assistants, can be a cash cow for that department.

“They’re treated as a revenue builder by most universities,” said John Taylor, an associate professor of biology and faculty fellow for academic affairs in the provost’s office at Southern Utah, a public university located in the largely rural southwest corner of the state.

Wyatt and a team of faculty members last year hatched a plan to reinvent how general education works at the university. Their solution, dubbed Jumpstart GE, began this fall with 43 students. It’s certainly a different approach. And while the experiment is too young to show any real learning outcomes, experts said the concept shows plenty of promise.