GE classes in college

[Staywhatyouare]

Are they a good thing to require of students? I’m currently a sophomore in college, and some of the classes I’m still having to take are ridiculous. I’m taking a physics course that is in no way different from the honors course I took in high school, and am learning absolutely nothing new or relevant in any way whatsoever to the career I want to pursue. All it does is waste my time studying for midterms and waste my effort when it could be much more usefully spent.

I understand that they wish for students to be well rounded, but I think that should done by the end of high school. That isn’t to say that everyone should know exactly what they want to do by the end of high school, but they should of the necessary skills in order to pursue anything they want and not have to do basic courses in classes they’ve already taken essentially. If they need to be exposed to a wide variety of things in order to find their specialty, that's one thing, but if a student knows exactly what they want to do, they should be able to pursue it to the fullest without distractions, they are the ones paying for an education.

or maybe this is an experience unique to my university?

 

[del]

It sucks when general education classes are dumbed down, but, speaking from my experience, I've had some GE classes I would never have taken (post-colonial literature, development economics, humanities of Indian Ocean societies, history of Palestine, etc) that were amazing and completely made up for the crappy ones.

I don't know how your university is, but at mine there are definitely "easy" and "difficult" GE classes -- if you have the option, take the harder ones. They're way more fun in the long run.

My experience has been positive since I figured that out.

Edit: so if I could design my ideal university, yeah -- I'd make kids go through GE classes. But there'd be NO classes like "Chem 101: Chemistry for Liberal Arts Majors" with 400 students.

 

[mathy]

Colleges want your (our) money.

 

[jiarem]

I agree with del, I go to a liberal arts school where I'm expected to take a bunch of GenEd classes, and while some are disappointing, I find that, with a little imagination and thinking, I can turn any subject into something interesting. I can find a way to make chemistry (sort of) interesting. I can find a way to make photography interesting, I can make a dry as bone Constitutional law class interesting. Furthermore, I've lately focused on making the projects I have to do in these classes relevant to my interests and goals. For Constitutional law, I studied the legal issues (mostly jurisdiction problems) involved in computer crimes. Now, for Forensic Chemistry, I'm studying the forensics of digital evidence (I had to bend the rules a little, but the prof allowed it). For abstract algebra, I did a project on elliptic curve cryptography. In a lot of classes, I can find some way to relate it to math or computers. Even in an Islamic art class, I considered researching quasicrystal tilings, since some Islamic buildings were found to be decorated in aperiodic tiling. I think that GE requirements can give you the opportunity to view different issues and perspectives raised by considering how various fields of study interact. It isn't a distraction, it's an offering of deeper and broader understanding.