What’s the DIFference: Evaluating the Validity Claims of a General Education Program

General education programs often offer students a choice among various courses to fulfill a specific requirement. However, the extent to which these courses equally enable students to achieve the intended learning outcomes can vary, potentially giving some students an unintended advantage. This article evaluates whether students are inadvertently disadvantaged in meeting learning outcomes across different courses designed to fulfill a global experience requirement within a general education program. This study analyzed differential item functioning (DIF) on a university-wide assessment among a sample of 1,697 students who selected one of five distinct courses. The findings revealed that multiple items exhibited DIF, with further analysis indicating that students who chose Macroeconomics to fulfill the global perspectives requirement were particularly disadvantaged on items measuring the ability to analyze “societies different from one’s own,” while being advantaged on more quantitatively-oriented test items. These results highlight a potential misalignment between courses intended to meet the same learning outcomes and raise concerns about equitable opportunities to achieve those outcomes.