4 realities reshaping general education at colleges and universities

EAB recently convened academic leaders from large public research universities to discuss the future of general education reform. While each institution brought its own context—state requirements, transfer pathways, faculty governance structures, budget pressures, and student success goals—a few common themes emerged.

General education is under renewed scrutiny from students, families, faculty, systems, and state leaders. Students are increasingly focused on career outcomes, affordability, and time to degree. Faculty are navigating incentives tied to majors, credit hours, and departmental priorities. And institutions are trying to make foundational learning more relevant for a student population entering college through increasingly varied pathways.

Across the conversation, one message was clear: general education reform is no longer just about what courses students take. It’s about how institutions define the value of undergraduate education—and how they organize themselves to deliver on that promise.

1. General education reform is an organizational change initiative, not a curriculum project

When colleges and universities begin discussing general education reform, the conversation often starts with courses, credit hours, and learning outcomes. Yet one of the strongest themes from EAB’s discussion was that curriculum design is rarely the primary obstacle to change.

Participants repeatedly pointed to governance structures, faculty incentives, budget models, and accountability systems as the factors that ultimately determine whether reform efforts succeed. Many institutions continue to reward departmental enrollment growth and student credit hour production, while offering few incentives for faculty and academic units to invest in shared undergraduate learning goals.

This creates a familiar challenge: institutions may spend years designing a more coherent, student-centered curriculum only to discover that the underlying structures still reinforce the status quo. Departments may understandably worry about losing credit hours, faculty lines, or visibility with prospective majors. Faculty may see little reward for teaching non-majors or redesigning foundational courses. And governance committees may have limited authority to ensure that approved courses continue to meet institutional learning goals over time.

Successful reform requires leaders to approach general education as an institution-wide change effort rather than a curriculum revision exercise. Building faculty ownership, aligning incentives, clarifying decision-making authority, and establishing accountability for student outcomes may ultimately matter more than the specific structure of the curriculum itself.

Pinpoint where your institution’s approach to shared governance is enabling progress and where it may be holding you back with EAB’s change leadership diagnostic.

2. General education reform is about communicating value, not defending requirements

Across institutions, leaders described growing student skepticism about general education requirements. Yet the conversation suggested that the issue may be less about the curriculum itself and more about how institutions communicate its value.

Students increasingly arrive on campus with a strong focus on career outcomes, return on investment, and time to degree. At the same time, many institutions continue to explain general education using language that resonates more with faculty than with students and families.

As one participant observed, students often experience general education as a series of disconnected requirements—courses they complete without fully understanding why they are taking them or how those courses contribute to their goals. This dynamic can be especially challenging in the first year, when students are still deciding whether college feels relevant, valuable, and worth continuing.

Ironically, many of the competencies employers value most—communication, critical thinking, adaptability, teamwork, ethical judgment, and the ability to navigate ambiguity—are the very capabilities general education seeks to develop. The challenge is that institutions rarely make these connections visible.

This suggests that reform is not solely a curricular challenge. It is also a communications challenge. Colleges and universities must become more intentional about helping students understand what they are learning, why it matters, and how those experiences contribute to their long-term success.

For some institutions, that may mean helping students curate general education courses around themes or pathways. For others, it may mean more explicitly connecting general education to career-ready competencies, certificates, advising conversations, or majors. The goal is not to reduce general education to workforce preparation, but to help students see how broad learning strengthens the education they came to pursue.

Save your seat for EAB’s Student Outcomes Summit in D.C. this November to explore how to embed career readiness across the student experience.

3. Artificial intelligence strengthens the case for general education

AI is challenging long-held assumptions about what students need to learn, how faculty should assess learning, and what it means for graduates to be prepared for work and civic life. But rather than weakening the case for general education, AI may make its value more visible.

As AI tools become more capable, students will need to develop the skills those tools cannot replace: judgment, ethical reasoning, creativity, communication, contextual thinking, and the ability to navigate ambiguity. They will also need AI literacy—not just knowing how to use these tools, but understanding how to question their outputs, recognize their limitations, and evaluate their broader implications.

Many of these capacities have long been central to general education. The challenge now is that institutions need to define them more clearly, teach them more intentionally, and communicate their value more explicitly to students and families.

For provosts, AI also raises practical questions about curriculum design and faculty support. Should AI literacy become a new general education requirement? Should it be embedded across existing courses? How should faculty redesign assignments and learning experiences for an AI-enabled world? And what support will they need to do that work well?

Rather than making general education obsolete, AI is forcing institutions to articulate its purpose with greater precision.

Explore EAB’s Higher Education AI Resource Center for research, strategies, and practical guidance to help institutional leaders navigate AI responsibly.

4. Multiple entry points into general education is a new non-negotiable

Today’s students are arriving with a wider range of prior learning experiences than ever before. Dual-enrollment credits, Advanced Placement coursework, transfer credits, military experience, certificates, applied associate degrees, and alternative credentials are now common. Increasingly, students are no longer beginning college as traditional first-year students with blank transcripts.

Yet many general education models were built for a more linear student journey: students enter, complete a prescribed sequence of requirements, and then move deeper into the major.

As institutions rethink foundational learning, leaders must consider how general education can remain coherent while accommodating multiple entry points and diverse student pathways. The challenge is not simply whether credits transfer. It is whether every student can meaningfully engage with the institution’s shared learning outcomes, regardless of where they begin.

For large research institutions—especially those operating within state systems—this balance can be difficult. Leaders may need to preserve transferability and reduce barriers to completion while still offering a distinctive, mission-aligned general education experience. Students who arrive with significant prior credits also need a clear explanation of what remaining requirements add to their education and long-term goals.

In the coming years, successful institutions will treat flexibility not as a compromise, but as a core design principle. General education systems must be coherent enough to deliver common learning outcomes and adaptable enough to serve an increasingly mobile and diverse student population.

For insights and tools to support today’s students from entry through completion, check out EAB’s Student Readiness Resource Center.

Liliana Loosbrock

Senior Research Analyst

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