Students at Georgetown and other top American universities do not know enough about the U.S. government and history, according to a report published this week by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
The survey said that students at Georgetown know less about American studies when they graduate than they did when they matriculated. The survey, however, was conducted by quizzing a crop of freshmen and seniors, and did not study the effects on particular students over time.
According to the ISI’s Web site, the report was based on a survey conducted by the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy in fall 2005, which quizzed 14,000 students at 50 American universities on topics ranging from American history, foreign policy, government and free-market economy.
The institute aims “to convey to successive generations of college youth a better understanding of the values and institutions that sustain a free and virtuous society,” according to its Web site.
Of the 50 universities surveyed, Georgetown ranked 43rd, with seniors knowing 1.2 percent less material than freshmen. Other universities ranked in the bottom 10 include Yale, Brown, Duke and Cornell. Universities posting scores in the top 10 included the University of New Mexico, University of Mobile and Colorado University at Boulder.
Cal Watson (COL ’07), an American studies major, said that, despite the results of the survey, Georgetown’s program sufficiently covers all appropriate material.
“We do cover American democracy and Jeffersonian ideals,” Watson said. “It definitely gets covered within the initial structure of the program.”
Aviel Roshwald, the interim chair of the history department, said that Georgetown and other top universities help improve students’ knowledge of American studies.
“The basic purpose of a university is to prepare people for a lifetime of learning, not to teach refresher courses,” he said. “I wasn’t clear what the agenda behind the survey was.”
Roshwald said he was unaware that the survey had been conducted and had not previously known of the results.
Megan Schumann (MSB ’09), who took the survey during the spring, said that the test wasn’t well-organized, and that returning the forms proved difficult.
Schumann said that the survey included about 40-50 questions and was distributed in O’Donovan Hall, and that the distributors did not identify themselves as being acquainted with the ISI or UConn.
“We thought it was a school survey,” she said.
Requests for comment from the ISI were referred to G.S. Schwartz and Company, a publicity firm hired to handle press inquires related to the survey. G.S. Schwartz and Company did not respond to calls for comment.
