According to the UT Catalog, “General education provides the foundation for successful academic study, for lifelong learning, and for carrying out the duties of local, national, and global citizenship.”
I don’t know about you, but this sentence reads like a BS filler statement I’d write in one of my papers to increase the word count.
In our first 12 or so years of education, we are exposed to classes across a multitude of disciplines. This is done with the intention of building basic skills and finding what each individual student is good at. By the time we get to college, however, most students have a fairly good idea of what they want to study. So why are we continuously subjected to classes that have no bearing on our chosen career?
Reading further down the page, it goes on to spew out similar statements in the support of a “well-rounded education,” like “developing broadened perspectives” and “to develop a commitment to lifelong learning.”
A “well-rounded education” sounds great on paper and as such is perfect material for the board of administration. But how does it actually apply in a real-world situation? How does the equivalent of a high school math class review help an English or music major? How does Chemistry 101 help a business major?
Instead of actually trying to learn the material and obtain a “well-rounded education,” a student who is being forced to take a class such as this will more often than not treat it with contempt. The time spent in gen-eds is time wasted; most students I know are well aware of this, and as a result will either cram all of their gen-eds into their first two years or put off a large portion of them until their senior year.
Our time in college is valuable. Right now, I’m paying somewhere around $10,000 per semester. Thanks to our national and state governments being largely unconcerned with the fact that most of us will graduate with upwards of $20,000 in student loan debt, that number is only going to get bigger. So when I have to pay the same amount for a 100-level math class, which gains me absolutely nothing in my career field, as I do for a 400-level class in my major that gives me valuable skills for life after college, I start to lose faith in the system.
By requiring us to take these certain classes merely for the concept of a “well-rounded education” and no other concrete, stated goal, the university is telling us that we are not intelligent or ambitious enough to pursue different subjects.
Outside of set major requirements, we should be able to freely choose what topics we want to explore. If I am forced to take a certain class as opposed to choosing it of my own free will, I’m not going to approach it with an enthusiastic willingness to learn; a leading cause of the affliction known as “senioritis.” When I can look at a class I am being forced to take and clearly say, “I have learned nothing valuable from this course,” something is wrong.
Who attends a university for their fantastic gen-ed requirements? The way I see it, requiring general education courses is nothing more than a money grab from the university. Forcing someone to take a course outside of their degree area is unlikely to cause them to want to pursue that subject further.
Making college into yet another routine task takes away from the basic idea of higher education; a chance to explore what we are most passionate about, and find out who we are as a person. If UT truly wanted to stand out from the crowd and attract the best and brightest students to Big Orange Country, then they would be proactive and reconsider outdated policies such as these which have little to no positive impact on a student’s education.
Saying you want to be Top 25 and actually working for it are two different things — something our university seems to misunderstand.
Kevin Ridder is a senior in environmental studies. He can be emailed at [email protected] or tweeted at @redinthehead99.
