One of the things that’s happening to the discussion here is that many levels are overlapping. Are we talking about institutional variety within US higher education as a whole? Are we talking about variety within relatively small, liberal arts colleges? Does it make a difference if those colleges stand alone, or are part of a larger institution? Are we talking about requirements for a major? Or requirements for anyone who wishes to earn a B.A.?

One of the basic things that an interest in pluralism requires is exploration of questions, notional open-mindedness, curiosity, a taste for difference and innovation, generosity, all things which ACTA’s rhetoric lacks in recent reports.

You say “there is not nearly so much institutional pluralism as I personally would like to see. Again, I think that’s one place where an organization like ACTA could play a valuable role if they were so inclined to do it. Rather than shilling for their own very evidently narrow, specific and non-debatable vision of good academics, they could be arguing for liberal arts institutions to spread out and explore a wide variety of highly ‘disciplined’ or coherent models for structuring a curriculum.” But ACTA does do just this. See Becoming an Educated Person, which advocates for a strong core undergraduate curriculum and explores how different colleges and universities (among them Brooklyn College, Cal Tech, Columbia, and Notre Dame) have designed such curricula to suit their particular missions and institutional needs.

You can check out SUNY Fredonia’s history department’s model for world history and see what you like/dislike about it–they switched over to a version of world history in the mid-’90s….

I’ll add a couple caveats/experience that perhaps add to or complicate that statement.

1. I think that the structured versions work best when you have a true class experience, such that a group of people move through the curriculum together and can consistently refer back to shared knowledge gained. Obviously the danger is always a dud group and then more are setback by the weak experience, however moving through a coherent and interacting body of knowledge allows one to think deeper probably quicker than dipping into a wide variety of areas.

2. As to the more open system, let’s say market style system, the key is maintaining a consistently high quality of courses over the 3 or 4 years that a student can draw from a departments well of knowledge. If a department can be confident in that ability then the students can swim in a fascinating field with teachers who are really engaged in what they are teaching. It also opens up new vistas or allows old ways to looked at again with new eyes for the students and the faculty.

3. A couple experiences, perhaps relevant perhaps not as much. I had something of this experience being in a small honors college within a large state uni, where the university English distribution requirement was replaced by a Great Books courses spread over the 1st and 2nd year. It worked because you had class with a lot of the same people and worked from a canon. It all fit together well and you came away with a much stronger sense of the material than the freshman comp. series produced. Then I shifted into the ocean that was being a history major, where I couldn’t have possibly have taken a more random accumulation of courses based mostly on random availability and the lowdown on the teacher. This went mostly toward poor advising and a department that lacked any coherence as colleagues, teachers, or researchers. I guess I bring these experience forward to say on the ground it is hard to make either one work really well.

4. One ‘methodological’ constructed version are departments that push students into original research almost from the get go. I mostly read about but not experienced this. I find this deeply problematic as it makes history too vocational and not adequately disciplinary or intellectual.

I hope I’ve advanced the discussion a bit.