On “general education” courses

[ZoomerMC]

Good day everyone.

The question of “general education” courses and their usefulness has been occupying my mind since I began university. To obtain a bachelor’s degree in engineering at my school, there are a set number of credits that one must obtain in courses such as English, Government, Social Sciences, and “Global Culture”.

It is common that students will obtain their basic credits through dual enrollment programs in high school or through AP credit, however the more specialized credits must usually be taken after entering university unless one is able to dual enroll at the same university. An example of such course is “Intro to World Geography”, which, despite the name, consisted of me spending half a semester learning about Apartheid and colonialism and the other half about the “geography of social constructs”. Fortunately the assignments for this course were so trivially easy as to allow me to make an A while refusing to attend class past the 4th week. By the way, this was the last course I had to take to meet the credit hour goal for “Global Culture”.

This invites the question “What is the purpose of such courses?”. It is often the stated objective that a university education should be “well rounded”, providing a facade of a liberal arts education for those majoring in technical fields. Indeed, to associate many of these courses with the liberal arts is an insult to the quality of a proper liberal arts education, and my peers almost universally hold these classes to be a waste of time whether they were interested in the subject or not. I recall Mr. Cromwell stating in one video that he did not strive to make exceptional grades in courses he was not personally interested in, and this was completely fine for him. I believe this sentiment is also completely fine for the majority of my peers as well.

So, along with the previous question, I would also like to ask some further questions. Are “general education” courses truly necessary for those pursuing a specified/technical major? Should colleges intend to have every student well rounded in the liberal arts during their attendance, or should pre-college education establish such competency? If general education courses are to be required, should they be restricted towards the foundations of reasoning (logic, mathematics, philosophy)?

[admin]

We think this is an important enough question that we have notified Mr. Cromwell since we think he can provide a very appropriate answer for your question.

[Wolfgang]

I agree with you that these courses are almost always an insult to the true ideal of a liberal arts education.
I view these courses as a way the universities make their money. It allows them to hire dimwitted professors that have no real value to offer students, drags out a degree that could have been completed in six months to four years, generates more student debt, and gives ideologically possessed professors a captive audience to indoctrinate.
From the student perspective it steals away time and energy from their field of study and therefore stifles mastery.

[HoratioSeymour]

I agree. I've always viewed these courses as just another cash grab. Sadly at my school you do have to attend the classes and you can easily fail for non-attendance. The classes are taught by very low-IQ usually females, diversity hires who hate white guys. I even had a problem in one of those classes. She tried to give me a B, but I emailed her asking why and telling her how she basically ignored all my effort in the class and how disappointing it is to get a B. I then found out she had a bias against me for an essay I had written disagreeing with her views about colonialism. So, I had to go all the way up to the deans to review my grades and I did finally end up with an A in that pathetic class.

We also learned about apartheid in class. She got very angry when I asked if Black people were truly better off now after apartheid.

[Alfred Cromwell]

Staff: Thank you for bringing this interesting post to my attention.
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You raise a distinction that modern universities are often reluctant to make: the difference between education and credentialing.

I have no objection to the idea that an educated person should know something of history, literature, philosophy, government, and the wider world. In fact, I would regard such knowledge as highly desirable, and City Tutoring does indeed have "core" requirements for some programs. However, the problem is that modern universities often require "general education" without providing a genuine liberal education in the proper sense of the term.

A course in logic, rhetoric, Western civilization, constitutional history, or great books may help to cultivate the mind. A course designed primarily to satisfy a for-profit distribution requirement often does not.

When I was a student, indeed I did not devote equal effort to every course. There were classes I attended diligently and classes that I regarded as little more than silly obstacles standing between me and the subjects I had come to study. In some cases, I attended as little as possible and suffered no lasting harm as a result. In fact, arguably, one could say it did me much good to avoid listening to the sort of witch doctors that tend to infect and spread ideological disease in such departments.

I am not convinced that a person is poorly educated simply because they earned mediocre grades or found little value in certain university courses. I have met students with impressive transcripts who possessed very little curiosity, brains, audacity, judgment, or capacity of thought. I have also met mechanics, tradesmen, and ordinary working men who were genuinely educated in the older sense of the word, and arguably, much better to be around overall.

If universities insist on maintaining general education requirements, I would rather see students studying logic, rhetoric, constitutional history, philosophy, mathematics, and great literature than accumulating credits in courses taught by undesirables that neither sharpen the mind nor deepen understanding.

Thank you for opening this topic of discussion, and I hope my perspective helps.

[ZoomerMC]

Thank you for your response Mr. Cromwell. I hesitated to include much of my opinion in the original post because I wanted to open up the thread to a broad amount of responses on the subject.

The for-profit property of these courses is, to me, the most pernicious. Most students at UGA are from in-state and have the HOPE/Zell Miller Scholarship, which pays 100% tuition if you take a minimum number of credits for a semester. Not only does this lead the average student to not think about the fact that they are giving money (from the state lottery, not their own) for a subpar course, it also encourages students to enroll in such courses for "easy" credits to meet the credit hour minimum, thereby providing an external justification for their existence.