Colorado Technical University

Why are there general education requirements for college degrees?

I am wondering why college students must take so many general education classes. I thought that was what high school was for! This is why my GERs are so easy and I am just breezing through them. I wish that along with my degree requirements I didn't have to take math, science and language classes, just history and social sciences. I feel like I'm wasting my time taking the same classes I had in high school over again, and wish I had taken more AP tests. I was priveleged to have had a college-level high school education. I have taken courses like chemistry, physics, english and foreign languages at a college level already. A lot of the students at my high school who went on to college have said that their GERs are easy as well.

Public Comments

1. For one, some people don't get around to taking these classes in high school, especially higher level math classes. Also, as progress through my degree (I'm a sophomore and have finished all general requirements), I find elements of those classes in my degree classes. I'm a business major and I have to use math in certain classes. I can't tell you how many papers I have written for my business classes and certainly being required to take that English course has helped me to write those papers well, even though I did feel at the time that I was just repeating high school English. Many of these classes seem pointless at the time that you take them, but in hindsight, they have been very beneficial.
2. Education is about more than job training (in fact, it often doesn't apply directly to your job). It is more about the skills you pick up in aquiring that knowledge, such as how to research and document something, write with flair, and insert relevant statistics correctly. It is also about having a rounded education. Learning what you can about how the world works is important, and you should know something about everything. If they cut anything out, I'd say a class or two (a foreign language and theater history, maybe), but you need to know more than you learned in high school unless you were blessed with great high school teachers in all subjects. You may not know how you will use your knowledge, but it is never wasted.
3. I know it can seem like a waste, but hang in there. Every college has a different idea of what the core educational requirements should be, and they have to revise them every so often. At my college, we just revised our core liberal arts and sciences requirements to reflect the changing demands of society. Students must select courses that meet particular criteria, such as problem solving or global citizenship. Students might still take what looks like a general education core, but they also have other options to fulfill requirements. Essentially, they get to create their own well-rounded plan of study. Not every college approaches it that way, but the idea is to provide you with a knowledge and skills base for the future. College courses might cover similar content, but the approach should be different and the course requirements should develop higher order thinking skills than those developed in high school. Hopefully the remainder of your gen ed course load won't be as boring for you. Try taking professors who are deemed more challenging by other students (but that the students still like). Check out www.ratemyprofessors.com, find your school, and check out the profs. It might help you to select faculty who will challenge you more. Good luck!
4. The thing about college that students rarely realize is that the university level programs are not about teaching you to become a <insert career here>. They are about learning, and becoming a well rounded, thinking, reasoning individual. If you just took history and social science classes, you would miss out on the different perspectives that the other courses can offer you. Even in social sciences, you'll need math skills, language skills, and a basic understanding of sciences. One thing I realized years after finishing my undergraduate degree was that not one course I took was a waste of time. Even if I thought it was at the time, I learned something valuable in each course, or it set me up to learn something in a further course.