Sadly, no. Many college students do not have the general knowledge of history and literature that was once almost taken for granted--even at Dartmouth. Via Betsy's Page comes this unscientific but nontheless interesting poll of Dartmouth students. Only 19.4% knew who wrote "Democracy in America" (Alexis de Tocqueville). But 83.9% knew that Helen was the reason for the Trojan War. Perhaps they saw the movie. Of course, when I was in school I saw a different movie (the one with Katherine Hepburn). Only 15.7% could name 5 Supreme Court justices.
Now, you may scoff (perhaps rightly so) that some of the questions on the survey are useless knowledge that only comes in handy if you want to go on "Jeopardy!" However, I stand up in defense of general knowledge. There should be a body of knowledge that well-educated citizens should share. At a minimum, we could start with the 5 freedoms that are mentioned in the first amendment to the constitution. Only 45.9% of the students surveyed could name 3 of the 5.
Yes, the questions in the Dartmouth survey are about western civilization, and I do think that college students need to learn the basics of western civilization. However, I would also like our shared general knowledge to include the ability to place the Ming Dynasty in the correct time period and understand the Middle Eastern influence on mathematics. General knowledge need not be limited to the west.
History repeats itself, but people tend to disagree on this fact because they only look at the technological revolutions that overshadow the veeeeery slow evolution of mankind. The technological and financial availabilities have been changing over time but not the human instincts and fears. We are still controlled by the same factors as our ancestors. The much stressed - or should I say, feared - quote "this time it's different" always stems from the fact that most people simply did not study history enough. And this is the reason why mankind will repeat its former mistakes, only in different places at different times.