<p>I wholeheartedly agree with including breadth courses for a college education. All students need a certain number of courses in sciences, social sciences and humanities. This is not job training this is a chance to learn many things to be well rounded with university level courses. I also agree that nonSTEM majors really need more exposure to sciences. There are technical colleges for those who merely want job training. Grad school is for focusing in on only one area.</p>
<p>I personally believe that basic stats, logic, and CS courses should be as much a part of every core liberal arts curriculum as English, history, and foreign languages.</p>
<p>âWhy would it be unreasonable to require a history major to have a basic understanding of the physical sciences?â</p>
<p>Thatâs my point. That is what I was trying to say. For instance, non-technical majors have to take math classes, but they usually only cover a subset of the material of the ones that the scientists and engineers take. Using the theory of, âwell, they havenât figured out what they want to do yet, so we have to expose them to everythingâ we should put the philosophy and history majors in a difficult math class or two (or something of similar nature) to make sure they donât want to do a STEM major. It just seems like the only thing people think when they talk about being well rounded is the arts and humanities, which arenât bad, donât get me wrong. But if we expect technical people to experience the world of those things, then why not ask the non-technical people to experience the more analytical and technological side of things.</p>
<p>Your point about credit by exam is good, @PurpleTitan, there are ways to get the credits besides throughout your degree. Iâm dual enrolled right now taking a couple general eds to get them out of the way for later on. </p>
<p>Trade schools do not require GE, and there are a lot of those schools. I opted liberal arts education for my kids.</p>
<p>D1 is doing very well at work. She is not utilizing any math or econ courses she took in college, but rather her critical thinking/problem solving ability.</p>
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<p>Are you suggesting that the math and econ courses did not help her develop and practice her critical thinking and problem solving ability?</p>
<p>As much as I am not crazy about Donald Rumsfeld one of his garbled pressers yielded one of my favorite quotes. Paraphrased, it says that there are 3 categories of information and circumstances, the knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns . . . that is, the things that we donât realize that we donât know. The last category is the most dangerous.</p>
<p>General education requirements are supposed give a student enough of a window into the vast range of fields of study and ways of thinking and living that the student may not know everything but will realize that there is a whole world out there of things that they donât know. It shift things from category 3 (the dangerous one) to category 2. We become better citizens, better decision makers and more critical thinkers by realizing that there is a whole range of experience out there beyond our own specialty. Just imagine a world where nobody took âRocks for Jocksâ or âAtmospheric Sciences for Art Historiansâ or âEnglish for Engineersâ or âPhilosophy for Finance Majorsâ. Weâd have a society of people who canât write in complete sentences, make financial policy with no ethical considerations, donât understand geologic time or know the difference between weather and climate. ;)</p>
<p>Coincidentally, when the museum looting started after the invasion of Iraq I knew exactly what was being lost having taken 2 survey art history courses. Yep, Dying Lioness of Nineveh, sandstone, 650 BC. I will go to the grave with that information still in my head someplace.</p>
<p>@saintfan, we have that society of people right now. A well-rounded education is fine for those who can afford it, but letâs not overblow it.</p>
<p>" Well, if time and cost are the issue (and you really donât care about them), Gen Ed credit can be gotten through AP/IB/CLEP/CC credit at many schools. And if the kid canât pick up those credits, it hard to argue that skipping those classes would be good for them. "</p>
<p>Well, that wouldnât be ours. Most of the AP classes arenât even offered until senior year. So they are very limited depending on your goals. DS took all the AP math, science, and physics that were offered. No time in the schedule for the humanities. CC is an hour away, so lot of travel time, and a car is now needed to get there. The dual enrollment cost $300 a credit, and since many colleges charge for the semester not the credit hours, it would actually have added to the cost of a college degree. Money we do not have.</p>
<p>And I could definitely argue that not taking humanities in college wouldnât be all that detrimental. The kids are exposed to any number of âhumanityâ courses in high school. </p>
<p>@laralei: Condolences, though you can self-study for AP tests to get AP credit. </p>
<p>I still regret I never made room for an economics course when I was in college. But at least I learned some political theory, some Chinese history and something about sociology for my âSocial Scienceâ gen ed requirement.</p>
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Physics as opposed to science?</p>
<p>I am biased. I have a BS, a BA, and am getting an interdisciplinary Masters. I am applying to get my PhD and studying the History of Science (specifically Eugenics) </p>
<p>It terrifies me to think of a society where engineers/scientists do not think about the broader implications of their inventions/developments/research. I believe every person (with a degree) should have to take history and philosophy/theory/ethics courses. I believe every person should understand basic math and science.</p>
<p>Look at all the stuff thatâs going on right now because of science and history illiteracy: rise in Measles and Whooping Cough because people donât understand vaccines, overuse of land because they donât understand what led to the rise of the dust bowl, etc, etc, etc. The list goes on. </p>
<p>I do NOT want people in charge who donât understand history, ethics, science, etc. You need to be well-rounded and that is, to me, what a degree signifies. </p>
<p>ETA: There is NOTHING wrong with opting for a trade school that doesnât require these gen eds. My father is a tradesman and I was raised around trades(wo)men. Different strokes for different folks but there is a fundamental difference between a trade school and a university education IMO. </p>
<p>@PurpleTitan thatâs why I added the 
It was my way of cutting my op/ed short.</p>
<p>So, I think weâve established that some people find humanity courses a benefit and others find them an annoyance. Perhaps it would be better to offer two degrees in each thing, one in which you only take the essential courses to earning the degree and one in which you take those plus some additional âeye openingâ classes. Give the people that take the broader load some kind of special designation on their degree and maybe some perks - better housing or tuition rates or a special scholarship, etc., but make it so that people who donât care to spend extra time and money in college learning things they care nothing about have that option. </p>
<p>The exception I would make to that would be English classes. Everyone, regardless of major, should be able to read and write effectively. </p>
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Memorizing math/econ formulas didnât help her on the job, but to understand theory to derive (predict) outcome is what she needed at work. Her critical thinking and problem solving ability didnât just come from taking courses in her major(s), it also came from philosophy & religion, art history, CS, history, womenâs studies courses. </p>
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No worries there. Virtually every school in the country requires some variation of English 101, which was not created so that student could write well in life, but so they could write well in college. Most accrediting agencies likewise insist that technical degrees (like the AAS) require a writing class of some sort. It wonât go away.</p>
<p>Some writers on this thread, like a lot of universities, seem to have a [cargo</a> cult](<a href=âhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science"]cargoâ>Cargo cult science - Wikipedia) theory of general education: we want GE courses to achieve X; they bear a striking resemblance to courses that do achieve X; therefore, all GE courses do achieve X. To which I suggest that if GE programs were doing their job, then we would see more of the following:</p>
<p>[ul][<em>]people would buy generic pain relievers instead of name brands; their quality is highly regulated (unlike "nutritional supplements, with which they are often confused)
[</em>]parents would vaccinate their children without fears of causing autism
[<em>]people would stop believing that humans and dinosaurs existed simultaneously
[</em>]our country would have learned the lessons taught by the Watts riots of 1965 and fiascos like Ferguson may have been prevented
[li]banks would not engage in predatory lending[/ul]</p>[/li]
<p>Instead, we see a massive failure of the same ethical and critical reasoning skills that GE courses supposedly teach.</p>
<p>And donât think for a minute that the stupid stuff is only committed by those who did not attend college. According to Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent (âAmerican Conspiracy Theories,â Oxford UP), roughly a third of American believe that President Obama was not born in the United States, a similar number believe that 9/11 was perpetrated by the Bush Administration, and âone in five Americans with postgraduate degrees show a high predisposition for conspiratorial beliefâ ([Scientific</a> American](<a href=âhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories/"]Scientificâ>Why Do People Believe in Conspiracy Theories? - Scientific American)).</p>
<p>A failure of critical reasoning skills among college seniors is specifically what drove the discussions of âAcademically Adriftâ several years ago. It was not a perfect study, but I donât think its conclusions should be discounted.</p>
<p>Iâm not saying that all GE programs or all GE courses fail. I am saying that before we give them some sort of blanket âOK,â we need to look carefully at their strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>In my state, Regents policy mandates 31-39 hours of GE, including 6 of writing and 3 of math. That leaves roughly a yearâs worth of GE courses that may or may not be accomplishing the things we want them to accomplish. Assessment efforts are underway, but they are carried out by faculty who may be strongly motivated to focus on the transmission of facts and look the other way when it comes to generalizable thinking skills. I hear a lot of âYeah, we do thatâ from colleagues who have a hard time making eye contact when they say it.</p>
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<p>tl;dr : How do you know that GE courses actually do what theyâre supposed to do?</p>
<p>Great points, @WasatchWriter. It depends a lot on who is teaching the class on how the subject is covered. </p>
<p>[ There is NOTHING wrong with opting for a trade school that doesnât require these gen eds. My father is a tradesman and I was raised around trades(wo)men. Different strokes for different folks but there is a fundamental difference between a trade school and a university education IMO.] </p>
<p>Using the theory that the world would be an awful place without widely âeducatedâ people in it, why is it okay for someone to be an electrician or a welder and not have general eds while an engineer has to have them? Is it because trade school people arenât <em>supposed</em> to contribute as much to society as people with degrees are or what? </p>
<p>Why does there have to be such a difference between trade schools and universities? When an engineer is hired, are they being hired for the work they can do (engineering) or for their philosophies on life? </p>
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<p>By this logic, we should require just about nothing because how do you know the ultimate outcome? </p>
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<p>Itâs simple. Electricians and plumbers are not making large-scale, highly-impacting decisions that are going to affect millions of people. Theyâre rewiring, replumbing houses- not designing mass weapons or messing with genes. </p>
<p>I do not think that everyone needs to go to college. I think thatâs a dumb idea for a variety of reasons. However, I want those in power- those making decisions which affect many people- to be broadly educated. </p>