“Students come [to college] with very different preparation levels,” she said. “The core curriculum helps bring those students together and helps build on what’s going on at the K-12 level and moves them successfully through college.”

Neal said the core curriculum allows different students from different backgrounds and varied educational experiences the opportunity to learn common values, and it can groom them into becoming lifelong learners.

In an interview with Diverse, Neal said the organization hopes to expand and focus on historically Black colleges and universities and other institutions with large minority populations in the future. 

While Americans across the board worry about higher education quality and expense, Neal said parents interested in minority-serving schools should be able to look at WhatWillTheyLearn.com and gain the knowledge to compare a historically Black institution, such as Howard University, against Harvard University. Howard University is the only HBCU included in WhatWillTheyLearn.com. She noted the Web site reports graduation rates. 

Dr. Wynn Goering, vice president for academic affairs at the University of New Mexico, said the ACTA unfairly penalized his institution by not crediting its requirements in composition and foreign language study. The University of New Mexico, which is a federally-designated Hispanic-Serving Institution, received a “D” on the ACTA web site. ACTA denied the school credit for composition with students being able to test out of the university writing requirement, or fulfilling the writing and speaking core requirement with a course in public speaking. There was no credit given to UNM’s foreign language requirement because intermediate level study is not required by the university.

“The University of New Mexico is unique in requiring a foreign language,” Goering said. “It’s part of the general education. We take language seriously here.”