I plan to major in computer science and just saw that a lot of the courses i need to take are general education courses. like writing, history, literature. are the requirements this much at other colleges or is it just pitt? and finally is there any way to not take the general ed nonsense and still graduate?
thanks a lot
Why? I would guess because Dietrich is where many Pitt students start before moving on to their chosen major/school at the end of sophomore year. It is the “college of arts and sciences” after all, not the the “college of technical science”. There is no way around a core curriculum. Most schools have core curriculum requirements. History/English/Literature are not nonsense as all teach critical thinking skills. Here is a blog that might help you to see the bigger picture. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/why-study-humanities-what-i-tell-engineering-freshmen/
We have found that the Pitt gen ed requirements are not out of line with other schools. Have you compared them to the requirements at other A&S schools? We’ve mapped them out and it seems they are pretty reasonable.
Well a friend of ours is at Penn State and he has to take gen eds like English Composition, history, science, foreign language, etc.
But Pitt is pretty generous with AP credit I thought, at least it works out well for my D. She does not have to take a lot of electives because of her 19 AP credits.
OP brings up a good point, and one that I think many overlook when looking at colleges. Many people focus on the major, and don’t think about what other courses they will be taking while getting their degree. Most, if not all, colleges will have these general ed requirements. But they can vary significantly between colleges that otherwise look similar.
I looked through just now and counted 18 courses of general education requirements. As a CS major, the math will be a part of your degree, so that leaves 17. That is substantial. Check to see whether Pitt allows courses to satisfy two requirements simultaneously. If so, you might be able to reduce the number that way.
As a point of comparison, it looks like Case Western requires 14(?) courses for Arts & Sciences, 3 of which would be part of a CS degree. That would leave 11 additional courses, including 2 semesters of zero-credit PE. (I picked CWRU because S is looking at both Pitt and CWRU, and has mentioned he wants a light gen ed requirement for his major.)
But CS programs can vary a lot in their requirements anyways, sometimes they are part of the engineering school and sometimes in A&S. Also some require Calculus and discrete math, others only college Algebra.
BTW, the Department of Computer Science (in the School of Arts & Sciences) is merging with the School of Information Sciences (that is the #10 ranked such school in the nation by US News) to create the new School of Computing Informatics. Therefore, the requirements could be changing in the near future for CompSci majors as the program will be under the purview of a different, new school. This will be finalized by the Fall of 2017.