Tori Wilson
Lantern Staff
College students are bombarded with general education courses that do not pertain to their majors, and they are required to spend money in order to take these courses. General education courses could be more specialized in order to better prepare students for their future careers.
In just about any career, it’s good to know essential math, reading and writing skills. Despite this, there are many courses required that do not help college students in their future endeavors at all.
Personally, it would be beneficial for students to take courses that will help them develop the skills for their future career. This way students become more knowledgeable in their field rather than stressing about assignments for a class that in no way correlate to their major.
These courses students are required to take often cost quite a bit of money. There’s tuition, student fees and typically a book of some sort that must be purchased for many courses. It’s much easier to spend this money on classes that correlate with their future career. Despite this, many times students pay a lot of money to sit in a class and learn information they’ll forget as soon as the class ends because they don’t need it. Quite frankly, it’s a waste of the students’ time and money. It also is a waste of instructors’ time as well.
Many of these courses do not benefit students and rather are a way for colleges to bamboozle students out of money. Some students will even go into debt because of having to pay an absurd amount of money on general education courses.
The purpose of college is to educate and prepare students for their future career. By requiring courses that do not correlate to students’ majors, colleges are indirectly failing students. College institutions’ first priority should be its students. They fail students by charging them for unnecessary courses and giving them the stress of unnecessary courses.
This does not set students up for success. Rather, it just adds to the growing pile of stress students face. While some courses such as college algebra and English composition can benefit just about any field, there are courses such as art appreciation that would only benefit careers related to art.
Overall, general education courses require unnecessary time and money from college students while not providing any real benefit. Instead, this time and money should be devoted to a more specialized path for students’ majors. High school is for generalization, and college is meant for specialization.
