Our University System in the US -- Too Much GenEd?

[foal]

I'm a senior at Indiana University and my college experience has not been a very satisfactory one. I'm majoring in Psychology, because I want to work in Psych research labs (I'm rethinking that now... but it was the plan).

My in-major classes are fine. It's the general education requirements I really have a problem with. Does anyone else feel like the majority of these classes are useless? I learned how to write a good paper in the first English class I took. That was a good skill to learn, but did I really need it honed through a ton of other classes over 4 years? Is there really a point to going through 120 credits of this stuff? Calculus and statistics are important for psychology students, so I'm not including them in my gripe. Biology is relatively important too, though the amount I have to take is pretty ridiculous and the vast majority of it not relevant. Besides the research methods and statistics classes I took, I've really learned no life skills or career skills. I've learned how to write papers and how to take tests, but that only took a semester.

Does anyone feel that majority of their undergraduate classes were important/helpful (besides making your resume look much nicer)?

I specify the US, because schools in other countries such as England are more specialized and less gen. ed.

[Kaj]

I majored in engineering. We had to take two 2-course sequences in humanities and a writing class. I got credit for the writing based on entrance exams, but found the humanities very worthwhile and made a more complete college experience -- e.g., I actually got to experience taking a class that wasn't 90% guys and personally enjoyed them (poli sci, geography of international conflict, and 2 US history courses). If an engineering degree was simply all engineering courses, my opinion is that it would start to resemble trade school rather than university higher education.

[foal]

Maybe I'm just grumpy because I don't want to go to school tomorrow.

I guess my point is that I'd like to see undergraduate degrees either steer more in the direction of trade schools without actually becoming them or at least shrink from 4 year degrees to two year degrees. I'm not saying I should only have to take classes within my major, but my major comprising less than half my total course load is going to far. Even though I feel that most of the time and energy I've spent on classes could be better spent elsewhere, I have no choice but to take them if I want to either get a graduate school degree (which is more like trade school) or get any job that requires a generic college degree.

[tshort]

What is too much general ed? What is your schedule this semester?

I'm finishing my BS in Math this semester and the gen ed reqs are:

3 English
4 Humanities (2 of which may be foreign language)
2 Social Science
2 Natural Science
2 Western Civilization

These total about a third of my total education requirements. I would say 70% of my classes have been important/very helpful. The rest range from helpful to worthless. My only issue is most of these humanities/social science classes I have taken are taught at a joke level, although the subject matter itself can be useful or personally enjoyable. I would prefer the option for foreign language courses to further cut into humanities/social science/western civ.

It's my guess that it will be hard to find a math, science, or engineering student who will complain to much about gen ed reqs.

[Kaj]

[ QUOTE ]
What is too much general ed? What is your schedule this semester?

I'm finishing my BS in Math this semester and the gen ed reqs are:

3 English
4 Humanities (2 of which may be foreign language)
2 Social Science
2 Natural Science
2 Western Civilization

These total about a third of my total education requirements. I would say 70% of my classes have been important/very helpful. The rest range from helpful to worthless. My only issue is most of these humanities/social science classes I have taken are taught at a joke level, although the subject matter itself can be useful or personally enjoyable. I would prefer the option for foreign language courses to further cut into humanities/social science/western civ.

It's my guess that it will be hard to find a math, science, or engineering student who will complain to much about gen ed reqs.

[/ QUOTE ]

Holy crap, that's a lot of non-math courses! It was 1 English (waivable) and 4 humanities for my B.S.

[Philo]

Here is an attempt to explain the benefits of a liberal arts education:

http://www.virtualsalt.com/libarted.htm

I just noticed this article has a religious/Christian flavor to it. Feel free to disregard that aspect if you want to, as I don't think it's necessary to understand the philosophy behind a liberal arts education.

[Taraz]

I think this largely depends on the school you attend. I think having a base of knowledge is very important. But at the same time, many of the required introductory classes are pretty awful.

[thylacine]

The US system is spread ridiculously thinly over too many subjects. Students are forced to take pointless courses at the expense of a deeper education in their specialty. Then they have to take more coursework for their MSc or PhD, just to catch up to the level of an undergraduate degree in other countries. Sadly I think that some departments want to perpetuate this system just out of a self-interested attempt to boost their numbers.

If anyone wants to broaden their education they can simply pick up a book. It should be a choice.

I preferred my experience. My undergradaute degree was 60% maths, 35% physics, 5% computer science. My MSc and PhD were 100% research, 0% coursework.

[kris_p]

I went to Uni in Scotland(though my friends from England get pretty much the same thing) and my course consisted of required courses and extra points we had to make up from any other courses.

We could take extra courses similar to the subject we had chosen to study, or just any random course, as long as we did a certain number of hrs/week to qualify as a full time student.

In my second year this meant i did a quarter of computing related stuff, a quarter maths, and half economics, even though my degree was in Software Engineering.

Sounds just as daft here as over there.

[tshort]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What is too much general ed? What is your schedule this semester?

I'm finishing my BS in Math this semester and the gen ed reqs are:

3 English
4 Humanities (2 of which may be foreign language)
2 Social Science
2 Natural Science
2 Western Civilization

These total about a third of my total education requirements. I would say 70% of my classes have been important/very helpful. The rest range from helpful to worthless. My only issue is most of these humanities/social science classes I have taken are taught at a joke level, although the subject matter itself can be useful or personally enjoyable. I would prefer the option for foreign language courses to further cut into humanities/social science/western civ.

It's my guess that it will be hard to find a math, science, or engineering student who will complain to much about gen ed reqs.

[/ QUOTE ]

Holy crap, that's a lot of non-math courses! It was 1 English (waivable) and 4 humanities for my B.S.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can see both sides of arguments for and against a few of my gen ed requirements. I will still have 52 credits in math and 30 in computer science (was CS first 3 years and ~26 credits will count towards free electives in math). I would prefer they eliminate 2 humanities, eliminate or condense western civ, and eliminate the 3rd english course.