<p>futurenyustudent, if you want to be a lawyer but can’t see the value of courses outside of “lawyer training,” then I hope to never be your client. </p>
<p>For the sake of achieving your goals, I urge you not to express your narrowminded opinions on your law school apps or in interviews.</p>
<p>“Narrow minded”=the majority doesn’t agree with me. That’s fine.</p>
<p>If you’ve been in a gen ed class in the past 5 years, you’d see my point. Half the students are on facebook. A half of the half that isn’t is reading the Onion. Of the quarter not on Facebook or the onion, half of them are on skype chatting with their friends, and the rest are sleeping, paying attention (a very small percentage) or daydreaming. You’ll only find a small percentage of students who are actually interested in the professor’s lecture, or remember even a modicum of the information from such classes past the final exam. It’s just some ******** that a college student has to go through. The vast majority of students aren’t interested. I think by the second semester of college when I was in a gen ed class, the professor’s lectures basically became background noise. I’d find it so uninteresting I’d actually tune it out. If you think I have no better way to spend 3 hours a week for a semester, I hope to god you’re more efficient in the real world.</p>
<p>I’m sure colleges know this. They’re perpetuating this nonsense because they can collect another year’s tuition. If I wanted to read the works of a dead, white man, I can go on amazon, buy a copy for $10, and read it. No need to go out and take a course.</p>
<p>Wait, can’t you just take the General Ed requirements at a Community College and / or test out of the requirements at most colleges? It seems like that might take a huge chunk out of the costs that you’re rightfully complaining about here (although, let’s be honest, no one has to go to a college that costs $200k over 4 years).</p>
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<p>Not if you want to win any law cases, it’s not.</p>
<p>You could’ve just gone to a college without a core. :/</p>
<p>As a high school teacher I deal with a lot of “good” students who are great at memorizing and regurgitating, but when it comes to thinking creatively they are scared because if they don’t get it right the first time it might negatively affect their grades and the parents will freak out.</p>
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And people from these schools (which are by no means cheap, btw) often go on to graduate school in their academic field? A bit like Cambridge, right?</p>
<p>The people in vocational schools (which I am not belittling) often go on to become excellent specialists in their fields. (Several parents on this forum have written about hiring graduates of schools like DeVry or Phoenix University) That’s what futurenyustudent was ranting about: the inability to become a specialist at a traditional college because you waste so much time with general requirements, an argument I think is invalid and silly, especially coming from a supposed future attorney.</p>
<p>But those fields aren’t academic. For people that want to specialize in an academic field, there really are limited options in this country.</p>
<p>Sigh. I wish the kids would stay off the Parent Board–we end up spending too many words trying to be responsive to naive and immature comments like those of futurenyustudent. As a retired corporate lawyer, I foresee the day when, tired of the soulless meat grinder of his corporate law career, and regretful of the tunnelvision that focused him so intently and exclusively on a career choice he knew so little about, futurenyustudent yearns for the days when he had the time and the opportunity to open his mind to a variety of subjects and appreciate the life of the mind.</p>
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<p>There seems to be some confusion. It’s the conservatives who want to have a strong core curriculum of the classics, with lots of dead white male-authored books on the reading list. The liberals are the ones who are fine with an open curriculum. </p>
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<p>Good heavens, what do you think you’re going to be doing in law school? That’s three years of reading books written by dead white males. Expensive, boring books. Books that your professor is going to cram down your throat, regardless of what type of law you want to learn. There’s core curriculum in law school, too. The lectures are boring, and you’re going to forget most of what you’re taught once you take the bar. </p>
<p>Threads like this make me think we need to add some sort of charm school requirement to the undergrad curriculum. :)</p>
<p>This thread got quickly off topic from the original article but I think nyustudent makes some valid points, although he could have expressed them in a more reasoned way.</p>
<p>I’ve lived in a European country for over 25 years and it is true that the university system here is quite specialized and in most “majors” kids come out after a standard five-six year course of study with the equivalent course-work and knowledge of at least a masters degree, although of course it is not called that. This system may vary from country to country and I know there is a big reform in progress in the EU to standardize the univesity system, that I think will make it more like the U.S. by reducing standard degrees to a 4-yr curriculum, but I don´t know enough to describe the changes.</p>
<p>But the system that has been in place until now in most EU countries is one in which high school graduates must choose and apply to a specific course of study and may not dabble in other areas. If they change their mind from say, wanting to be an engineer, to wanting to be a historian, they have to start all over.</p>
<p>This may have its advantages for many people, if you know what you want to do, you´ll get there quicker with more specialization sooner. Two of my daughter’s high school classmates have begun medicine this year in different EU countries and both were working with cadavers their first semester.</p>
<p>I have always preferred the American system and that´s why my Ds are/will be studying in the U.S. But I can sympathize with nyustudent´s frustration…my D1 is an NYU freshman film student and as such half of her classes are in film and the other have a gen ed requirements, and I have encouraged her to appreciate and take advantage of the opportunities to explore different subjects. But sooner or later at NYU or any other expensive private school, you are going to be in a class or two that makes you question why you are there. A typical class at that school costs about $5,000 if you divide tuition into four classes per semester. If you get a lousy class which everybody seems to be blowing off and you regret choosing, you are bound to be angry with the system.</p>
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Heavens. You truly do not have any idea of how the concept of law has evolved and how that plays into the job of an lawyer (even a corporate lawyer). </p>
<p>History, and all the “dead white guy” books that describe the thought of the period when our legal system developed will give you an idea of how a culture impacts the resolution of disputes, whether it be between individuals or nations. And while you read the books by the “dead white guys” you might want to pick up the books by the “dead asian guys” and the “dead middle-eastern guys” and a few other cultures as well, as corporate law has become so much more international with the advent of globalization. If you don’t understand these cultures, understanding their legal systems will be much more difficult.</p>
<p>What you are doing here is assuming the people who know more than you don’t know what the heck they are doing developing a curriculum. And you know what happens when you assume something?</p>
<p>The fact that you and all the people on facebook, reading the Onion, etc. are not paying much attention to the discussion on the “dead white guy’s” book says that you need to be led to being a mindless automoton like the stereotype of the guy on the assembly line putting together corporate cases based upon a fixed recipie of laws.</p>
<p>I’ll tell you one thing, corporate law evolves over time and will continue to do so long after you’ve finished your career (if you even make it). What was practiced in the '60s and '70s as corporate law has very little to do with a lot of what is being litigated today. The successful corporate lawyers (at a high level) understand the cultural evolution going on around them and anticipate where it is going in order to position their clients better. And the evolution of culture starts with understanding where it came from (hence reading books by “dead white guys”). </p>
<p>You can continue to rail against the enlightenment opportunity you have before you or you can embrace it and try to figure out where it will take you. The choice is yours.</p>
<p>actually ED Hirsch who wrote those books about what everyone needs to know, charecterized himself as a liberal. And Columbia, famous for its core curriculum, is not known to be conservative. OTOH, many quite liberal institutions don’t have a highly structure core curriculum. </p>
<p>I think the issue of core curriculum for undergrads is orthogonal to political ideology.</p>
<p>This life of the mind stuff you speak of belongs in high school. I don’t need to spend $50k on it. When I spend that much money, I expect to get something of actual, substantiable value. Gen ed might be a good idea in theory, but it’s a horrible idea in execution. Gen ed requirements, by nature of being required, makes Gen ed just another piece of bureaucracy one has to navigate to study what one really wants (especially if one knows what one wants to study). You’re delusional if people actually care about the material in those courses. For a vast, huge majority of students it’s just another vestigial piece of bureaucracy. Something crammed down their throats that they regurgitate on the final, only to remember 0.1% of what they studied.</p>
<p>As for understanding foreign cultures, you learn more about foreign cultures when you go live out there for a week and talking to locals than you’ll ever learn in a semester-long class.</p>
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<p>DougBetsy, I’m with you 100% on this one.</p>
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So, your spring break vacation was more educational than the class you took, eh? </p>
<p>You know, you can take the Bar Exam without going to Law School (where you might waste another 3 years of your life). I’m sure you can learn more in watching Judge Judy than they teach in some of the worthless classes (to a corporate lawyer) on constitutional law.</p>
<p>I am not sure I get this thread</p>
<p>a. There are many decent colleges that don’t have a core curriculum. Most don’t, in fact, IIUC. Just freshman english, and distribution requirements. Columbia type curriculums are fairly rare. </p>
<p>b. There are some that are well known for flexibility. UR, I think, for example. Thats leaving aside the many engineering and preprofessional programs that require far more than 40 credits in the core area.</p>
<p>c. FutureNYU mentions law school. If you are going to law school, a core type curriculum is probably looked on very kindly by the law school admissions people. Ditto philosophy. Now if you are ONLY good at poli sci, say, or music, or biochemistry, and want to take all your classes in that to game your GPA, well I can see why you would want no core or gen ed courses, but thats really about gaming admissions - studying that one field you are good at is NOT the same as studying law. no, poli sci is NOT law. </p>
<p>I think someone has just had a recent bad experience with a particular class, and is venting</p>
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<p>Lol. ^ A poster-child for why it really matters what college your student goes to in terms of the student body. This is ONE type of student (common on some campuses, rare on others). This is just one student’s perspective but they actually think you are delusion to believe their viewpoint isn’t the dominant one held by most students (no doubt in their little world of one college, their viewpoint IS the dominant one perhaps, but its not at all at other colleges). </p>
<p>And as a business school professor, the above mentality is why I think undergrad business degrees are a bad idea. Some students should just go to vocational school for job training.</p>
<p>You guys are being too harsh to Futurenyustudent. You have to remember that he is the product of a failed educational industrial complex. He does not know any better. He is a victim of mean people who are trying to force him to read books.</p>
<p>FutureNYU student… just wait until you get to law school and you have to spend 60K per year on stuff that isn’t even on the bar exam! I mean, you have to learn %^&* and are expected to do well in it even though you could become licensed without ever having had to know it. The pain, the horror.</p>
<p>You may be interested to know that the Gen Ed requirements in law school are far more onerous than those in undergrad. The number of electives in law school is quite small; you will be taking Civil Procedure whether or not it is ever relevant to you in your own personal or professional life. And yes, you need to regurgitate it for the test. And yes, you can forget it the day after. But since you can’t practice law without being admitted to the bar in most places, that’s the way it goes. You can’t perform a vasectomy without having completed an OB/GYN rotation even if the person you are operating on has neither a uterus nor ovaries. Sometimes licensing boards have expectations about “what you need to know” even if you think the requirements are bogus (and for sure med school would be a lot faster if people who wanted to serve only one gender didn’t have to learn about the anatomy of the other gender.)</p>
<p>So now may be a good time to re-evaluate those life’s plans. I’m sure there’s a job out there suitable for you, go and seek.</p>