ALISSA MORRONE had hoped to attend Johns Hopkins, perhaps Carnegie Mellon. But both returned thin envelopes. What she thought was a safety school, Boston University, sent similarly defeating news. Its College of Arts and Sciences rejected her, but the envelope was not thin. The College of General Studies, the letter promised, had a place for her.
Dear Matt Orlando: the College has the money. By Benjamin Ray and Diego Grossmann • March 29, 2019. After months of conversations with workers to formulate Bowdoin Labor Alliance (BLA) demands, and Orient reporting on Bowdoin’s compensation program, we lament that only public pressure could generate a response from the College. 09/12/18-09:00: ED strategy for LACs (Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, Middlebury)? The response from Williams/Amherst would be back in time for her to apply. Doesn't go to school or work, and sits on the couch playing video games all day.
“I was kind of ashamed at first, almost as if I wasn’t good enough to get into the school I wanted to be in,” says Ms. Morrone, now 22 and a senior at the very college that had not admitted her.
The two-year general studies program is one of the largest entry points for freshmen at Boston University, accounting for more than 15 percent of new undergraduates. But high school seniors seldom learn about the program from their guidance counselors, and few apply directly. More than 65 percent of students in the program were rejected by the school they had applied to, and referred to general studies.
At New York University, the number is even higher: 100 percent. Until this past fall, students could not even apply to its program, which over the past four years has cycled through three names: general studies to liberal studies to core program.
General studies, too, means many things — it’s a four-year individualized degree (University of Idaho); a way station for undecided majors (Texas A&M, the University of Illinois); a liberal arts college for older students (Columbia University).
Continue reading the main storyMore often, however, it is about giving a leg up to high school graduates who have shown some academic success but fallen short of their peers, particularly in test scores. For universities, the programs are a way to hang on to tuition dollars and students they’re willing to take a chance on. For less competitive students, they’re a back door in.
Linda Wells, dean of the College of General Studies at Boston University, points out that admissions officers “are looking for a certain board score on the verbal and writing components, and students are competing like a horse race, like an Oklahoma land rush, for that seat.” Those on the cusp, with a rejection or wait-list response in their mailbox, can find a spot in her program, then transition into the larger university as juniors — a move guaranteed by all the programs.
And enrollments are growing. New York University’s two-year program, which emerged from the continuing education department, has increased 55 percent over the last decade, to some 1,050 freshmen, and this year is marketing itself as a boutique program with smaller classes (20 students or under) and closer advising.
General studies curriculum tends to be interdisciplinary and foundational, with emphasis on writing and group work and less on testing. And no giant lecture classes. “Research is showing that working with undergraduates, especially first- and second-year students, is best done using what the American Association of Colleges and Universities calls high-impact practices,” says Paul Ranieri, executive director of the Association for General and Liberal Studies.
Emory describes its two-year program as liberal arts intensive, with the focus on class discussion and case studies “in a small-campus setting” — in fact, it isn’t even on the main campus but 38 miles east in Oxford, Ga. The college awards an associate’s degree, though most go on for a bachelor’s, and has no remedial component, says Steven Bowen, the dean.
“There is no institutional desire to shunt less competitive applicants to the Oxford campus,” he says.
Still, the college is less competitive than Emory’s College of Arts and Science, which admitted 27 percent of applicants last year compared to Oxford’s 44 percent. Current freshmen in two-year programs at Emory and B.U. scored 100 points lower on their SATs, on average, than their peers. High school grade-point averages for B.U. general studies students are an average 3.4, compared to their peers’ 3.7.
These programs, however, more closely resemble the primary academic units they were once meant only to complement. Partly, administrators say, that is because of the evolution of the institutions. Once regional schools, they have ascended the national rankings and get far more applications, and a higher caliber of applicant.
B.U. was a commuter school. “Over the decades, Boston University has transformed itself entirely,” Dean Wells says.
Fred Schwarzbach, dean of N.Y.U.’s liberal studies department, which includes the two-year program, says that to keep up with the new N.Y.U. his department needed to progress. “The program was born for students who might have difficulty for one reason or another in one of N.Y.U.’s main academic units,” he says. “As our students have come to look more like students at the rest of the university, we’ve tried to emphasize our distinctive identity, not because it has a role in boosting those students, but it follows the art of the core curriculum, a highly articulated program.”
In their transition from the margins, the general studies programs have reshaped themselves. B.U. now places students into teams, with 100 sharing the same three or four faculty members, and no teaching assistants. Dean Wells tells students that her school is like attending Bowdoin College before attending a large research university. “The irony is that one of my colleagues who has been here for 40-plus years said the original program was an honors program for underachievers,” she says. “I had to change our mission when I became dean, because we used to be a college where a student could get admitted based upon their potential, not based upon their high school achievement.”
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Students in general studies programs remark on the smooth transition.
“There was a lot more advising than my friends in other majors,” says Jennifer Fannin, a senior in Texas A&M’s general academic program. “When I went to my freshman orientation, I was able to meet with an adviser and he spoke to me about what class times would be best for me and about a work load that would be a good fit.”
But Ms. Morrone, the B.U. senior, recalled the remedial roots of general studies when she comments on how easy it was. “I really enjoyed my humanities and social science classes, although I learned a lot of the social science material in history classes in high school. A lot of it was repetitive for me.” Still, she says, “It was like our own little bubble within B.U. I liked this close-knit community.”