Unnecessary gen­eral edu­ca­tion require­ments delay grad­u­a­tion and detri­ment stu­dents’ pocket books

The col­lege expe­ri­ence offers a great oppor­tu­nity, to tra­di­tional and non­tra­di­tional stu­dents alike, for per­sonal growth and enrich­ment. Key courses in a student’s pro­gram, like cal­cu­lus for the math­e­mat­ics major, offer use­ful knowl­edge that will aid them in fur­ther stud­ies and valu­able skills which may land them a job or an internship.

Every under­grad­u­ate pro­gram how­ever, is lit­tered with courses that meet gen­eral edu­ca­tion require­ments such as global con­scious­ness or crit­i­cal think­ing. Many of these courses are of lit­tle ben­e­fit to the stu­dent as they can be irrel­e­vant to the individual’s future career. Often times, these filler courses make obtain­ing a degree a more timely process and, con­se­quently, a more costly one.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ web­site, the aver­age time it took to obtain a bach­e­lors degree was 55 months for those grad­u­at­ing in 1999–2000 (nces​.ed​.gov). This is about 4.6 years. I can only spec­u­late that this fig­ure has been at best main­tained. It is more prob­a­ble though, this fig­ure has increased con­sid­er­ing that grad­u­a­tion require­ments have become increas­ingly dif­fi­cult to meet.

Many would argue that these gen­eral edu­ca­tion courses, though offer­ing no spe­cific skill or knowl­edge one might prob­a­bly uti­lize, enrich the per­son by teach­ing them life lessons like crit­i­cal think­ing and work­ing as part of a group.

Skills are not unique to these inap­plic­a­ble classes. One can eas­ily get this kind of expe­ri­ence in a course that will be vastly more impor­tant in their career or education.Further-more, one could acquire this same type of expe­ri­ence dur­ing an intern­ship, an oppor­tu­nity that is infi­nitely more valu­able than a one-semester course that will prob­a­bly be lost to mem­ory in less than a year.

Some unneeded classes may be detri­men­tal to a stu­dents selected pur­suits. A pro­fes­sor may not asses the impor­tance of the courses they teach in rela­tion to how this knowl­edge will go on to ben­e­fit the stu­dent. Because stu­dents com­monly lack the expe­ri­ence and insight to know what courses may actu­ally be use­ful to them in the future, they may allo­cate their time in a very unben­e­fi­cial way. Effort that could be spent toward some­thing extremely use­ful is then lost for­ever. I think I can speak for most stu­dents when I say that pri­or­i­tiz­ing my study efforts has less to do with what will be use­ful to me after col­lege and more to do with which exam is next on the calendar.

If a pro­fes­sor over-inflates the rel­a­tivism of their course, regard­less of intent, the stu­dent only stands to suffer.

This is not to say that courses com­monly defined by these require­ments are not ben­e­fi­cial to some. Individuals tak­ing courses purely out of inter­est likely find many of these courses fas­ci­nat­ing and do not view them as mere hur­dles that need be cleared on the way to a degree. For stu­dents who are ded­i­cated spe­cific field of study how­ever, courses that lie out­side of their cho­sen scope rep­re­sent prob­lem­atic obsta­cles that cost them time and money.