Undergraduate education in the US has long stressed breadth of knowledge, but in the face of the pressures of ever more intense specialization and commercialization, core curriculum courses have tended to become disjointed, and educators have been faced with the knotty question of "what makes an educated man?"
大學本科教育一向標舉通識的美國，在面對越來越激烈的專業化、市場化壓力，使得通識課程趨於渙散，也感受到「什麼構成一個知識人」的大困惑。