[A_perfect_lady]

Wow. I got better courses than that at the community college. To get an Associate’s that would transfer to my mid-level university, I had to take 2 years of math, 1 year of lab science, 2 years of History, American Lit, World Lit, and 2 years of foreign language.

[memyselfandi59]

I’m not defending Princeton, but you don’t get a Bachelors without the General Requirements. The author of this piece was probably looking at her courses on her major...she may have just gone there after getting her General Requirements out of the way.

In their general requirements they list Quantitative Reasoning (i.e. math) and Science and the number required in each field for a bachelors.

http://www.princeton.edu/ua/sections/11/

[justiceseeker93]

Gosh, I hadn't seen or heard about Leonard Koppett (a well known sportswriter from yesteryear) in quite some time. Turns out there's a good reason for that: Koppett died in 2003. This is a piece he wrote in 1987. So why post it now?

[rey]

Oh yes.

I was shocked by how little I did to get a BA in English. By my reckoning, a MA in English (Which I earned) is less equivalent to a BA pre 1965 or perhaps earlier.

My Masters in Library Science was even more “BSie” than the other two degrees together, but that got me a job. Go figure.

By this reasoning, I seldom read books on literature or grammar that were written after the 50’s or by anyone educated after the 50’s.

To paraphrase Flava Flav “Education is a joke.”

[Sooth2222]

My daughter graduated from an "elite" liberal arts college almost 7 years ago. Besides the outrageous tuition bills, what struck me was that her curriculum wasn't required to be awfully broad. She needed to make an effort to go out of her comfort zone -- in her case, she majored in performance arts, and minored in chemistry. But my Jesuit liberal arts education from a bazillion years ago was much more rounded than what was required of her.

[Cicero]

No Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton. No Plato or Aristotle, no Caesar or Cicero. No Keats, Shelly, or Wordsworth. Maybe a little Jane Austen.

On the other hand, it could have been worse. I don’t see any gender bending, colonial oppression, or postmodernist relativism courses—although they could have been worked into some of those mentioned, I suppose.

[libstripper]

“[F]our courses in French language” would probably equal two years (four semesters) of French. From my four semesters of struggle with Spanish at the University of Illinois, I’d say that part of her curriculum was definitely not easy.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Ivy League grads generally do well because they’re naturally intelligent. The schools run their admissions departments very well. It’s the education part that they suck at.

[oincobx]

Well, she was apparently able to obtain employment post-graduation.