Great Ideas for Higher Education

The National Association of Scholars has put together a list of "One Hundred Great Ideas for Higher Education". There are lots of good things on the list, like listing on transcripts a student's grade as well as the average grade in that class, which would be a way to reveal and probably start to reverse grade inflation. There is also lots for a department like ours to like.  For example, the third point is "Require Western Civilization."  Not many people know that before there was what we might call "Core inflation", for a year or two all students at AU did have to take Western Civ as part of the AU Core.  It is possible that AU was the only school in the country to require that.  Lower down on the NAS list you'll see such heart-warming recommendations as "Bring Back Latin", "Require American History", and "Preserve Liberal Education." For your inner administrator there are ideas like "Offer Alternatives to the four-year Degree", "Publish Employment Outcomes", and "Predict Students' Success Probabilities."