Why Are We Designing a New GE?

We are redesigning the BYU General Education program because we can do better. Our faculty excel in teaching general education courses to the benefit of our students, but it has been almost 50 years since the last major revision of the program. GE has become encumbered with rules and workarounds so numerous that for many students (and faculty) it has become difficult to navigate. The complexity can delay graduation, and students take more GE classes than required. Assessment and survey data reveal that how the GE program is currently organized makes it hard for students to understand its mission and goals.

In the half-century since the current GE program was implemented, it has drifted away from some of its original purposes as it has responded to the changing demands of the institution and ideas about the role of higher education. Furthermore, because GE’s program objectives predate the assessment requirements, it lacks the ability to properly assess and call for improvements to its own certified courses. GE certifications increasingly serve the departmental programs, limiting the breadth of the program as specified in the BYU Aims.

Assessment shows the GE program is gradually getting out of step with national standards, and this puts our students at a disadvantage when preparing to adapt to a complex and rapidly changing competitive world. Our outdated categories strain to allow room for novel fields of knowledge, and the system lacks the agility to respond to real-world problems, also outlined in the BYU Aims.

Our goal in designing GE is to create a program that reflects BYU’s distinctive identity, global perspective, and commitment to equity and diversity, something that is lacking in the current program. Our findings made it clear that piecemeal reform was not possible, and a redesign was called for. In the past three years, we have followed a phased program of exploration, envisioning, and designing a model by faculty and for faculty review.

We have undertaken this redesign under the supervision of AAVP John R. Rosenberg and Academic Vice-President C. Shane Reese. The process follows best practices in curriculum design and includes ideas from key stakeholders: students, faculty, and academic advisors.