How Strong Is the Ivy League Curriculum?

We hear over and over that the eight universities comprising the Ivy League are elite institutions. They train our future leaders and do so much to advance knowledge. That’s what they want everyone to believe so we’ll keep going to great expense to send our sons and daughters to them.

But is there really anything so wonderful about the education students receive in the Ivy League? The new book Slacking: A Guide to Ivy League Miseducation will cause readers to be skeptical about that.

Students accumulate many of their credits in soft and fluffy courses or ones that are meant to impart ideological beliefs. Authors Adam Kissel (with the Heritage Foundation), Madison Marino Doan (also with the Heritage Foundation), and Rachel Alexander Cambre (on the faculty at Belmont Abbey College) examine the undergraduate offerings at each of the Ivy League schools and conclude that it is easy for students to coast through to their degrees without having to do much demanding work. Students accumulate many of their credits in soft and fluffy courses (such as pop-culture studies) or ones that are meant to impart ideological beliefs—courses that don’t entail the study of any body of knowledge but merely require students to parrot back the correct opinions.

Students may leave their illustrious schools with little improvement in knowledge and skills. In short, graduating with an Ivy League degree does not guarantee that a student has received a superior education, or even anything approaching a respectable one. Students may leave their illustrious schools with little improvement in knowledge and skills from their high-school days, while having acquired a lot of misinformation—all at very high cost.

The book has eight chapters, one for each of the Ivy League schools. That makes it easy for prospective students to make good curricular choices at the school they’re attending. But rather than review Slacking school by school, I will focus on the three main weaknesses the authors identify: writing courses that don’t so much teach students to write as indoctrinate them with the professor’s beliefs; easy courses that students can substitute for rigorous ones, especially in math and science; and courses that give students credit for “studying” pop-culture topics or blatantly politicized material.

Let’s begin with writing. Writing courses used to be about fine-tuning students’ ability to craft good sentences, paragraphs, and essays. Professors would assign papers based on literature, then grade them sharply for errors in English usage. Over the last several decades, that has changed dramatically. First, few professors want to take the time to critique student papers, which can lead to complaints against them for racism, harassment, and so on. And instead of having students read and then write about fabled novels, many professors turn to topics meant to saturate students with their political views.

Consider this writing course at Cornell: “Educational Inequalities and Reform Efforts in the U.S.” There certainly are educational inequalities in the U.S., but the course is geared toward instilling a “progressive” mindset about education reform rather than about ensuring that students learn to write well. Or how about this writing course at Yale: “Black and Indigenous Ecologies,” in which students “engage with anti-colonial and anti-racist attempts to imagine the earth no longer made in the ecocidal image of imperialist Western man.” Students will have to read and discuss a lot of radical environmental material, but will the course improve their writing skills? That’s very doubtful.

Next, let’s focus on the way the Ivy League schools allow students to avoid the kinds of demanding courses that used to frighten and demoralize undergrads who weren’t up for hours of hard work.

Like most colleges and universities, the Ivies (except for Brown) have a “distribution requirements” system, whereby students must take at least a course or two in mathematics or science. But they have courses that will satisfy those requirements without causing the students any distress. At Cornell, for example, the natural-science requirement can be fulfilled by taking “Natural History of the Magic Kingdom: Understanding Animal Behavior through Animated Films.” At the University of Pennsylvania, students have to take a course on quantitative analysis. Many of the choices for that are sound, but this one is attuned to social-justice activism: “Anthropology and Praxis,” which entails “theory and analysis in the interest of change motivated by a commitment to social justice, racial harmony, equality, and human rights.” Having the “correct” beliefs will help a student get through the course, but having “wrong” ones would probably be a great impediment.

Students who want to steep themselves in leftist ideology can choose “Power to the People: Black Power, Radical Feminism, and Gay Liberation.” Now, let’s look at some Ivy League requirements in which students can substitute frivolous courses for ones that might actually expand their intellectual horizons.

At Harvard, students must take at least one course in the Aesthetics and Culture category. There are a number of fine ones in the catalog, but students who want to steep themselves in leftist ideology can choose “Power to the People: Black Power, Radical Feminism, and Gay Liberation.” And for a social-science course, students can take “Harvard and Native Lands,” immersing themselves in guilt over the university’s ancient history.

In “Topics in Critical Theory,” students “scrutinize the jargons of authenticity and interiority in a range of current cultural discourses.” At Princeton, students must take at least one course in Epistemology and Cognition, and there are solid choices, but there is also “Topics in Critical Theory,” in which students will “scrutinize the jargons of authenticity and interiority in a range of current cultural discourses while adding new perspectives from feminist theory, new materialism, and aesthetics.” In short, a course on the professor’s mindset.

Also at Princeton, students are required to take at least one Literature and the Arts course. Many of the possible choices are respectable, but students who prefer ideology and activism over truly artistic material can choose “The Political Lives of Angela Davis” or “Climate Storytelling for Climate Action.”

Columbia University is one of the few schools that still has a serious core curriculum. But, aside from those few courses, students have a huge smorgasbord of trendy and/or politicized courses to choose from. For example, there’s “Decolonizing the Arabian Nights,” which “situates its advent and vogue in specific cultural contexts that closely relate to the rise of the bourgeoisie and the colonial enterprise.” That isn’t about transmitting knowledge but merely the professor’s pet grievances.

Brown University has a completely open curriculum that allows students to take whatever they please. The school merely encourages them to take a course under the heading of Race, Power, and Privilege, which is a playground for faculty activists. Among the courses on offer are “Race and Gender in the Scientific Community,” “Myriad Mediterraneans: Archaeology, Representation, and Decolonization,” and “The Politics of Contemporary Black Popular Music.”

Just a few years ago, a degree from any Ivy League school was thought to be a badge of distinction, but now that employers are starting to evaluate prospective workers based on their knowledge and skills, students attending an Ivy (or any other college or university) had better choose their courses carefully, avoiding the kind of academic junk food that may look tempting but will do them no good after graduation.

Slacking can help students make better curricular decisions. It might (and should) also cause academic leaders to rethink what they have allowed to happen to their institutions. They have, shortsightedly, let the faculty run wild with trendy, politicized courses that they want to teach. This has dumbed down academic rigor by letting students avoid the kinds of challenging courses that used to be pillars of a college education. It’s time for a thorough housecleaning.

George Leef is director of external relations at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.