That’s the whole point of gen eds or core. Otherwise they’re just open electives.
More so if the college is trying to be a “general” college, rather than one with a strong focus area, since a “general” college needs to accommodate a wider range of student academic interests as well as more competing viewpoints on what should or should not be in the core curriculum.
And that disparity is very visible in the widespread misunderstanding how science works. Especially during the pandemic.
i’d argue that even though very few people need to know the second law of thermodynamics, EVERYBODY needs to know the fundamentals of scientific method and how science is created.
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Likewise very few people need to know Shakespeare if that is the standard we are going to go by :-). But I agree with your point on the scientific method. We see this even more with people who write about scientific topics in the press and communicate with the broad public.
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That’s why I suggested previously that for such a “general” college, if it wants to ensure its students have broader exposure to core subjects (and the techniques used to investigate those subjects), it could create more than one “core” curriculum to suit the needs of different students.
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I disagree. Imo it is the most useful and relevant of the three laws of thermodynamics, I refer to it regularly, and explains a lot of any household with children in it! and, I would not know it if I had not been obliged to take physics.
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You know, I can let slide the tangential discussion of the importance of writing or math. But numerous posts about which laws of thermodynamics every student needs to know (or not) is well into the debating category. Let’s not miss the forest. Move it along please
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I am thankful every day I didn’t have to take physics. Haha!
Here is a sad but true story which illustrates the downside of core requirements…
As a high achieving tenth grader, I dropped algebra, where I got a C, to move back to prealgebra. I got a D. 
For the rest of high school, it was all down hill from there.
I attended CC for longer than I should have, after which I simply applied to my local state U. The degree had a math requirement. Saying that math is not my thing is an understatement.
Once at college, I enrolled in and dropped algebra again. So, I thought I would try statistics instead. This is completely ridiculous, but 18 year old me simply though of statistics as interesting facts.
I had no idea it was a whole branch of mathematics. Imagine my surprise on the first and last day of the stats class, when I learned no interesting statistics whatsoever. (That’s my kids’ favorite story about my college career. Ironically, both excelled at stats.)
Time passed and I began to get very concerned about meeting the math requirement in order to graduate. I was now a junior. Summer session came along, and at last, I found a math class I could take and pass! It was called Liberal Studies Math. I only remember that we were taught how many ways to recombine the letters in the word Australia. I took the class Credit/No Credit and passed with flying colors.
The very next semester, that class was discontinued.
I graduated with my degree and never thought about math again…or so I thought. For MANY years, I would occasionally have nightmares that I didn’t actually get my degree because I had failed to meet the math requirement.
Moral: Core requirements might cause some students a LOT of stress and anxiety. Better for students to know that about themselves, but also, there’s a lot they can do to get through hard classes. Don’t be like me, who never once went for tutoring or met with a professor. 
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I will share our family story. I went to a school with a ton of graduation requirements. I loved it. Some of my favorite courses that I remember to this day were because I “had” to take them to graduate. One was an archeology class with, unbeknownst to me at registration, the premier underwater archeologist of his day. One of his finds was on display in a museum we visited decades later in Europe. Very cool to have that connection. Another was a bioethics class that I took in the law school at my university (but as an undergrad) that unexpectedly ended up helping greatly in my career.
For my D, that would have been torture. She wanted nothing more than to study what she wanted. Because her school was very generous with AP/DE credits, she only had one gen ed - an oral communications/speech class. She ended up having a ton of room in her schedule to take all kinds of courses that she found interesting. She ended up doing a series of communications classes that earned her a certification in collaborative leadership, had room for a concentration, was able to take management/econ courses, has room for research as a class, etc…
She absolutely does not have the “well rounded” experience that I did, but she has enjoyed every minute of her education and has positioned herself exactly where she wants to be for her chosen career. She had the most call backs, interviews, and job offers out of all of her friends. She knows very well her strengths and interests and it has worked out very well.
The beauty of the US educational system is that there is a good fit for every student and we don’t have to be pigeonholed into something that doesn’t work for us.
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However, many or most students are highly constrained by cost and location, so choosing a college based on fit of core or general education requirements is typically low on the priority list.
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It seems to me that the schools that have the most core requirements tend to be the more expensive options. In schools that are more flexible, it’s easier for students to create what they want and replicate a core if that’s what they’re after. Harder to do it in the reverse situation.
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Yes, my kid is waiting on IB scores. Apparently his school will allow good IB scores to count for some of the core classes. We have heard they are more restrictive about AP credits, counting 4s and 5s as elective credits but seldom accepting them as a substitute for the core. We are not sure how true any of this is because the website is vague. After 4 years of a rigorous and prescribed class schedule in high school with lots of writing, discussion and analysis, he was yearning for a flexible experience where he could trust himself to follow where his interests led, but again practical factors (location and price)won out.
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In general, If AP credits can’t be applied to core requirements, IB credits won’t either. But every college sets its own policy, and I’m sure someone will point out the exception. 
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Every college has its own AP/IB credit policy just as every college has its own “core” (or whatever it’s called) curriculum requirements. If a student is concerned enough about these requirements or course credit policies, s/he should carefully study them before s/he applies.
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Sorry but not all cores work that way. Some have choices within the structure. I don’t think we even saw a single one that was so fixed there were not choices within it ( and we looked at a lot of them).
I think those are generally referred to as General Ed Requirements as opposed to a core curriculum which is typically has less flexibility.
We found both. None were as rigid as described by @GWnorth, however. Might be out there, we just didn’t see anything too constricting. Think that Columbia was the most stringent based on my '22’s thoughts.
In some cases, colleges with generally typical distribution requirements may offer optional cores. Kenyon, with its IPHS program, represents an example of this.
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I think there are two distinct advantages of a core curriculum. First, the one that has been discussed a lot here is that it compels a student to be “well-rounded” and graduate with at least a little knowledge and understanding of multiple disciplines. The second advantage though, is the very fact that a core curriculum forces students to take classes that they may not otherwise have taken. Why is that good? Because 18 year olds for the most part haven’t had the academic and life experience to really know what they want, and often are surprised to learn that they like something they didn’t expect to like. My daughter and I have just been on 7 college tours over the past two weeks, and we heard some version of this story at most campuses: “I was required to take a class in “x” subject and expected to hate it, but once I took the class, I realized I loved it and now that’s what I’m majoring/minoring in.” For that reason, I’m a big proponent of the core curriculum, as I do think that it can often open up a whole new academic interest for some students that they may not otherwise have even tried.
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