{"id":2660701,"date":"2026-09-14T08:56:58","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T12:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignhow-red-states-are-replacing-woke-college-classes-with-real-education\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T09:01:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T13:01:17","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignhow-red-states-are-replacing-woke-college-classes-with-real-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignhow-red-states-are-replacing-woke-college-classes-with-real-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Red States Are Replacing Woke Colleges With Real Education"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignhow-red-states-are-replacing-woke-college-classes-with-real-education%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2660701&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Conservatives are optimistic about changes happening in higher education, especially in the area of general education, which often goes unnoticed.Recent reforms,such as Iowa&#8217;s law requiring all college students too take introductory courses in U.S. history and American government, aim to reinforce foundational knowledge of the nation&#8217;s history and institutions, eliminating courses that focus on identity politics or marginal topics. Traditionally, general education serves to provide a broad, shared knowledge base in areas like history, literature, science, and civics, ensuring all students acquire essential cultural and civic understanding. However,many institutions&#8217; approved courses for general education have expanded into niche or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/meanwhile-in-seattle-ice-cream-shop-offers-free-milkshake-with-proof-of-vasectomy\/\" title=\"Meanwhile, in Seattle: Ice Cream Shop Offers Free Milkshake With Proof of Vasectomy\">politically charged topics<\/a> that may not contribute to this foundational knowledge. Some states are also restructuring their university departments based on enrollment size, threatening departments with few majors but potentially vital roles in shaping civic understanding. The proliferation of politically infused general education requirements and the decline of certain majors, like African American Studies, suggest a shift away from progressive content toward more basic civics and history, with <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >legislative actions increasingly influencing curriculum offerings<\/a>. these developments indicate a move toward reforming higher education to reinforce core American values and history, potentially reducing the influence of identity politics and ideological biases in college curricula.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Things are happening in higher education, and conservatives have good reason for optimism, though many victories may be reversed with a change in political leadership. One theater of action usually goes unnoticed: general education.<\/p>\n<p>The term sounds bland, and gen ed policies often look at first sight like a mush of bureaucracy and bean-counting. But changes to general education are one of the handiest levers of reform available to conservatives.<\/p>\n<p>Prime example: This summer the Iowa legislature passed and Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law <a href=\"https:\/\/www.legis.iowa.gov\/legislation\/BillBook?ga=91&#038;ba=hf2800\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">mandating<\/a> that college students in the state take one course in U.S. history and one course in American government. Courses shall be introductory and straightforward, covering central and momentous features of our past and present. The law stipulates, too, that courses at University of Iowa shall be designed and run by <a href=\"https:\/\/legiscan.com\/IA\/bill\/HF437\/2025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the new Center for Intellectual Freedom<\/a> on campus, not by history, political science, or related departments. (I am on the board of the center.)<\/p>\n<p>To appreciate what Iowa politicians have done, consider what general education requirements are for. The model goes back many decades, to when colleges and universities began to divide into disciplines in which students would major then graduate with a specialized preparation.<\/p>\n<p>General education took place before that, in freshman and sophomore years. It introduced students to a body of knowledge that all recipients of a degree possessed regardless of major. Students learned of seminal developments in the course of history, masterpieces of art and literature, breakthroughs in science and technology, great ideas and revolutionary events and monumental figures.<\/p>\n<p>All students took a long survey of Western Civilization, U.S. history from the Puritans forward, freshman composition, foreign language, and basic math and science courses. To graduate knowing nothing of the Renaissance, the Founding, and Newton\u2019s laws was disallowed. <\/p>\n<p>Iowa institutions agree with this conception. Iowa State <a href=\"https:\/\/las.iastate.edu\/academics\/general-education\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">says<\/a>, \u201ccourses in general education are designed to establish a strong, intellectual foundation for all specializations,\u201d while University of Iowa <a href=\"https:\/\/catalog.registrar.uiowa.edu\/liberal-arts-sciences\/general-education-program\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">promises that<\/a> its \u201cCore requirements provide students with a broad foundation of knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those descriptions imply that no advanced courses or special-topics seminars may count; the content of the courses approved for gen ed credit must be capacious and broadly applicable to our country and culture. Indeed, the very number of qualifying courses must be limited.<\/p>\n<p>If you examine the list of approved courses at Iowa State, however, fully <a href=\"https:\/\/las.iastate.edu\/academics\/general-education\/general-education-approved-course-list\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">379 entries fall<\/a> under one area alone, Arts and Humanities. Some of them do fit the traditional gen ed mold in their breadth and centrality, such as \u201cHistory of Christianity: Early to Medieval\u201d and \u201cSurvey of British Literature to 1800.\u201d Many more, however, are boutique courses that contribute only marginally to\u00a0foundational\u00a0knowledge, including \u201cRacism in American Popular Media,\u201d \u201cScience Fiction,\u201d and \u201cPrinciples of Sports Media and Communication.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>At University of Iowa we have <a href=\"https:\/\/catalog.registrar.uiowa.edu\/liberal-arts-sciences\/general-education-program\/#UndCultPer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">11 required areas<\/a>. Under one, Understanding Cultural Perspectives, are 70 offerings; under another, Values and Society, we have 69. It is good that basic courses on the Bible, classical mythology, and American religions count, but not that \u201cBrazilian Culture and Carnival\u201d and \u201cBlack Television Culture\u201d do, too. The set-up enables each student to customize his curriculum and do so with niche courses with a political slant.<\/p>\n<p>The new law requiring broad surveys of U.S. history and government curtails it. No longer can students get a degree and not encounter the Bill of Rights, the Civil War, the Pilgrims and Puritans, and the Depression. Traditions, actions, and expressions that make up our history and polity will not be random knowledge. Courses that focus on one identity group or pursue tendentious topics (\u201cRacism in . . .\u201d) are disallowed. An American core is preserved, the foundations of our republic taught and tested.<\/p>\n<p>Indiana has recently taken a different action illuminating how the current structure of general education at many colleges can actually hinder reform. Last year, officials <a href=\"https:\/\/www.in.gov\/che\/academic-affairs\/academic-degree-programs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">set about<\/a> consolidating or eliminating departments and programs that produce fewer than 15 bachelor\u2019s degree recipients per year. It was presented as a cost-efficiency measure.<\/p>\n<p>This regulation shifts the measure of a department\u2019s success from the number of students who enroll in its courses to the number of students who select it as their primary major. This is disastrous for many departments and programs that have few majors in spite of the size of a public university such as Indiana, which produces more than 8,000 bachelor\u2019s degrees a year.<\/p>\n<p>The Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies <a href=\"https:\/\/aaads.indiana.edu\/about\/faculty\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">lists 11 professors<\/a> on its faculty page, but <a href=\"https:\/\/nces.ed.gov\/collegenavigator\/?q=Indiana+University&#038;s=all&#038;id=151351#programs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">according<\/a> to the U.S. Department of Education, only four students in 2024-25 graduated with an undergraduate degree in that field.<\/p>\n<p>How does the department justify its existence, then? By offering 21 courses that meet gen ed requirements in Bloomington, <a href=\"https:\/\/gened.indiana.edu\/approved-courses\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">including<\/a> \u201cSurvey of Hip Hop\u201d and \u201cContemporary Black Film.\u201d Students enroll in one of them and get a gen ed category out of the way.<\/p>\n<p>Although hardly any kids proceed to the major, the head of the department can go to the dean at year\u2019s end, point to overall enrollments, and declare, \u201cWe\u2019re doing great! Give us more resources.\u201d The bare fact of so few majors suggests that, without the gen ed designation, which coerces students into the room, those enrollments would shrink considerably.<\/p>\n<p>In this case, general education shores up otherwise unpopular departments. It explains, too, the existence of gen ed categories that have a political edge. At Rutgers University, there is a \u201cdiversity\u201d requirement whose courses <a href=\"https:\/\/generaleducation.camden.rutgers.edu\/learning-goals\/cross-cutting-categories\/div\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">teach students to<\/a> \u201cExplain the processes or histories that create or fail to create just, productive, egalitarian and collaborative societies,\u201d while at U-Mass in Amherst, the Social and Cultural Diversity strand <a href=\"https:\/\/www.umass.edu\/gened\/general-education-curriculum-areas\/social-world-al-hs-sb-i-si-du-dg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">has courses in which<\/a> \u201cStudents will gain knowledge of structural and cultural forces that shape or have shaped discrimination based on factors such as race, ethnicity, language, religion, class, ability, nationality, sexuality, or gender.\u201d The \u201cstudies\u201d departments provide those courses.<\/p>\n<p>Such requirements are all too common, and one purpose is to ensure the survival of certain programs. A reform that drops the DEI angle in general education and instead requires basic civics and history instantly alters the ideological nature of the curriculum.<\/p>\n<p>Conservatives have been writing books and issuing expos\u00e9s of bias for many years. Those efforts haven\u2019t slowed the course of political correctness one bit. What has happened in Iowa, Indiana, and a few other states lays out another path of reform.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, the\u00a0Washington\u00a0Post\u00a0ran <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/education\/2026\/08\/25\/why-colleges-are-cutting-black-studies-departments-majors-classes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a story with the headline<\/a>, \u201cWhy colleges are cutting back Black studies departments.\u201d It mentions actions in Iowa, Indiana, Texas, and Kansas that have either closed African American Studies or merged it with other departments.<\/p>\n<p>Protests at the cuts have been markedly weak as well, perhaps because the numbers are so stark: the\u00a0Post\u00a0story noted that for the last three years only 700 of the hundreds of thousands of degrees granted have gone to African American studies majors. Students are voting with their feet, and with legislators acting accordingly, general education may no longer support the progressive agenda,\u00a0but instead oppose it.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Mark Bauerlein is emeritus professor at Emory University and an editor at First Things magazine.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conservative wins in higher ed often target general education<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1221,"featured_media":2660702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/35886425964_1446eba2c7_k.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[85622,71905,5152],"class_list":["post-2660701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-college-reform","tag-conservative-policies","tag-education"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/35886425964_1446eba2c7_k.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2660701"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2660707,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660701\/revisions\/2660707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2660702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2660701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2660701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2660701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}