Colgate University Earns an “F” for Core Curriculum;
Fails to Rank in Top 50 Feeder Schools for Graduate Programs

From 1989 to 2006, when enrollment at Colgate University rose an estimated 3 percent, the administrator headcount grew from 117 to 216, a whopping jump of 85 percent. In the past ten years, setting aside increases in the costs of room and board, books and fees, the annual price of tuition has grown from $23,880 to $39,275, a 64% increase, placing Colgate University in top one percent of most expensive colleges in the nation. Incredibly, Colgate University doesn’t make the list of Top 50 Graduate School Feeder Colleges.

Colgate students post well-above average scores on ACT and SAT tests, yet, after four years, some find they have trouble getting into graduate programs without remedial work. In a recent poll, students and recent alumni say the curriculum is weakest in math, science and economics.

An Objective Reassessment

“A strong core curriculum should, to the extent possible, ensure that students finely hone their basic skills and learn the most important aspects of our heritage, culture, and our world. However, despite having what it calls a “Core,” Colgate University essentially has no requirements in broad subject areas such as English, math, science and history. Students can literally wander for four years at Colgate University and never be exposed to general areas of knowledge—the very hallmark of a liberal education! A student can graduate from Colgate University without ever taking a course in American history, without ever studying economics, without ever being exposed, in the words of Matthew Arnold to “the best that has been known and said.”

Dr. Barry Latzer, 2007 Reassessment of Colgate University Core Curriculum

 

Colgate University ranks among the worst for core curriculum

"Sadly, despite its much-vaunted “Core Curriculum,” Colgate University received an F in the recent 50-college study of general education conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Only in Foreign Languages did Colgate have an honest core requirement, i.e., a required course that is suitably general in scope.

“In the six other subject areas measured by the study, entitled The Hollow Core, Colgate University fell far short of standards for a true core curriculum. Some of the reasons for this are revealing. For instance, Colgate does indeed have a writing course for freshman, but the fine print reveals that only students with low scores on standardized tests of writing are required to enroll. All college students can benefit from writing or composition courses.

“Nor was Colgate credited for mathematics by the Hollow Core study because students can completely avoid math by taking science courses that fully satisfy Colgate’s Natural Sciences & Mathematics Division requirement. Likewise, Colgate got no credit for science, since a student could take math or psychology (a social science) instead of a natural or physical science. In addition, Colgate’s Scientific Perspectives requirement may be satisfied by courses too narrow to serve as general education, such as an entire course devoted to AIDS.

“When one looks behind the labels in Colgate’s catalog, there is, sad to say, little in the way of substance required by this general education curriculum.” The Hollow Core, Failure of the General Education Curriculum, A Fifty College Study, American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Washington DC, April 2004.