You just need to tell the kids that they need to figure out by the time high school is done. And they will. This is what happens the world over. In many many countries which are far less resourced. They can still do a distribution for a third to half of the courses in undergrad. In many countries they don’t even have this luxury. Indeed an undergrad major is only a third of the courses of the entire undergrad. If you need to go to 6, it is really expensive, both for the individual and for society. It is like boiling the ocean because there is commitment phobia.
Amen. Expanding this a bit further, one could say that learning just about anything is its own reward. Obviously the levels of impact are different among different subjects, but I don’t think learning is ever a waste of time.
And the arts are (well… can be…) lovely, and leave us with thoughts and feelings like Wordsworth had:
For oft, when on my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood… they flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude. And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.
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Society also benefits from postponing young adult competition in the job market. Again, the Wesleyan experience suggests that when given the choice between graduating in three years versus four, people - Americans - seem to prefer four years.
Presumably these kids come from wealthy families, and there is no pressure to graduate early. And they are relaxing for an extra year rather than get into a job soon. It is a question how parents/ society set expectations. If someone is paying tuition, they can go for 2 more years after 4. Or 4 more years. Why grow up in a hurry and take on responsibility before you absolutely have to? I can sympathize with the kids. I don’t need to encourage 6 or 8 though.
As the kids say, “You be you.” 
An extra year of school is at least 200k in opportunity cost + 80-100k tuition room and board. I can’t afford to pay. I will be me. They can pay for it.
Would you prefer paying for four years of commuting to school? Or, four years of distance learning? There are ways of saving money that don’t involve a lot of upheaval in the present system.
It is a function of what resources I have available at the time the decision is being made. Luckily we could afford to pay for four years of residential education. This is not necessarily to be taken for granted, and the kids are aware.
Anyway one of them has made grad school decisions based on opportunity cost considerations among other things. STEM grad school won’t cost anything. There will be a 50k stipend. He didn’t apply.
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You deserve this:
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Now you’re talking, @prezbucky .
And Wordsworth has something to tell us about the darker side of things, the natural fumblings and false starts that go to make up a life:
"...How strange that all
The terrors, pains, and early miseries,
Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused
Within my mind, should e’er have borne a part,
And that a needful part, in making up
The calm existence that is mine when I
Am worthy of myself! Praise to the end!"
Being young has its miseries, but nothing is lost in life. And things tend to work out.
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Not sure who these posters are? I don’t believe I’ve indicated that “liberal arts” is “well defined” in the sense that you seem to be using the phrase. I can’t speak for others, but I view the concept of “liberal arts” as a loosely defined and relative, with different definitions to different people in different contexts, but with enough shared understanding to make the phrase meaningful and useful.
I understand this might not satisfy someone more suited to seeking “easily verifiable truths” but then ambiguity is part and parcel of liberal arts.
It seems you do have an idea of what liberal arts means to you after all, and you don’t much care for it. But are those really the only two choices? Is it at all possible to for one to recognize the value of this “entirely American” approach yet still appreciate the more narrow, quantitive approach to which you often refer?
Speaking of the value of the liberal arts approach, earlier in the thread you wrote:
If this is true, then what in your opinion is the value of the liberal arts approach? Knowing this may help us all understand your perspective.
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
. . .
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.
. . .
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Song of Myself (1892 version) by Walt Whitman | Poetry Foundation
That’s pretty good, MT, but another one by Walt might also have some applicability to our situation:
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astonomer where he lectured with much applause
in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
So THAT’s where Alanis Morissette copied from. 
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Ironic, isn’t it?
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I want to invite Mr. Robert Frost to our little poetic sidebar.
If college courses/majors were apples… or (more granularly) bits of knowledge were apples… which would we toss into the cider heap, as of no worth?
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
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Pretty sure Maya Angelou penned this one she had in mind the endless criticisms of the liberal arts approach . . .
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
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Early tracking allows greater optimization of course sequencing and progression once the path is decided. However, it is worse at finding the optimal path for some students who may not have a good idea early on. Early tracking also means that parent influences are greater (i.e. the kid may be more likely to follow or be pushed toward the parent’s path, even if it may not be the best fit for the kid).
Of course, the volume and sequencing of courses in some subjects does require an earlier decision than in other subjects, if the student is on the traditional-in-the-US college schedule (four years after high school). College frosh with advanced placement may have some additional flexibility compared to those without advanced placement.
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One more point, for STEM, the value of having a liberal arts degree (STEM or humanities major) undergrad when applying to med and grad schools is increasingly important and innovation in the STEM fields requires a multidisciplinary approach to solving the key health and science issues of the day. The med schools and engineering programs are making this point and the message is getting across to students. Brown University’s eight year program is known as the “Program in Liberal Medical Education”. Williams College has a track record of placing its students at the top medical schools and research labs in the world. The message is that there are many pathways to professional success for students, the LAC pathway is well worn pathway for the top students in so many fields.
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If the concept is so ambiguous, then every college can probably claim that it offers a “liberal arts” education. Are you comfortable with that? If so, would it still have meaning?
I care enough to ask the question. In my response to another poster upthread, I stated:
If “liberal arts” are just a set of those fundamental courses that I think every student should take, then the concept seems to be redundant. Perhaps that’s why the other countries don’t need such a concept?
If the “liberal arts” approach is what I stated above, it gives students the breadth of knowledge they need. The different approaches are really about depth vs breadth. The trouble is that some schools claim to have a “liberal arts” approach but don’t require their students to reach the necessary breadth, while some other schools that don’t claim to adopt a “liberal arts” approach actually do. Doesn’t it sound confusing?
How about giving us some examples, @1NJParent ? What are the schools that you say “claim to have a ‘liberal arts’ approach but don’t require their students to reach the necessary breadth”? And, by the way, define “necessary breadth”. And what are the schools “that don’t claim to adopt a ‘liberal arts’ approach [but] actually do so”?
I have a hunch this all leads back to your favorite school. Why don’t you just come out and say so? There’s room in my world for M.I.T. Can’t there be room in your world for Kenyon College?