Careful planning and restructuring of curricula will allow the university to continue to reach members of its diverse student body. Its admissions criteria are selective but not elitist, with qualifications drawn from the full student profile, not from standardized test scores alone. The Student's Academic Program Excellent as many observers find undergraduate education at Michigan State University, and as satisfied as some of the institution's graduates have been with the educational process, the baccalaureate experience-can be improved. According to many national studies of higher education, distinguishable problem areas exist in undergraduate education. Several of these are curricular.
Many educators emphasize the importance of skill development to supplement traditional curricula.
A university education now must incorporate communication skills across the curriculum to cultivate students' capacity to think critically, to integrate and to synthesize, and to apply the principles of empirical investigation. Much of the traditional undergraduate curriculum does not attend to these areas in any systematic way. Related to these specific curricular problems is the general process of education as an experience that begins at the pre-school level and continues throughout life. Better integration of K-12 and university instruction would probably obviate the need for the present extensive remediation at the university level. It would also improve the consistency of educational goals and aims from the student's point of view.