If students are very careful and are well advised, they may choose courses that are, collectively, the essence of a sound liberal education, courses that introduce them to the rich diversity of the human experience, courses that are properly sequenced to ensure a logical and cumulative acquisition of skills and knowledge. Too often, however, students and their advisors are confused by the array of courses, and they become frustrated when they find that sections of the most appropriate courses are filled. As a consequence, students frequently choose or are placed in courses only as a last resort. Often with an advisor's encouragement, they merely fill slots in their general education program with little or no thought for the coherence of the choices they make. Too frequently, their course selection amounts to choosing what is least threatening, rather than what is most enriching.
Practical problems compound the pedagogical faults in the present general education program.
Consequently, they must take additional general education courses that lengthen the time it takes to finish a degree. The overall effect is to give general education a bad name. It becomes a series of haphazard and unrelated hurdles a student must overcome rather than a coherent program whose importance the university stresses by requiring it of every student. In response to these circumstances, President Kustra made it clear that reform of general education is at the top of his list of priorities. At his initiative, an ad hoc committee was convened early in the 1999 Spring semester and given the charge to plan the reform of general education at Eastern Kentucky University.