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As mentioned by many posters, universities have a responsibility of creating programs that produce well-rounded individuals. A bachelor's degree is a general or even generic degree; if you want to specialize in something, wait until you get into a master's or doctorate program. While you may believe that something is irrelevant (i.e., botany in a nursing program), the student who continues his/her studies in another area of medicine, health, or healing, such as ethnobotany, will be glad that they took the botany course.
The world has changed and many, many professions are interdisciplinary. This is another reason universities create their programs and include courses that may appear unnecessary.
I believe the original intent of gen-ed was to create well-rounded students. Today they are all about taking more money from young naive students.
The only ones that should be required are math, english, basic economics, and basic finance classes. They are basic life skills everyone should have!!
I can't speak for private colleges and universities, but state ones are non-profit. They don't sit around thinking, "gee, what can we do to milk students of their money? I know! Let's make them take extraneous courses".
Most of their funding comes from the state govenment and research grants. The basic requirements, such as gen ed courses and minimum number of credit hours to make a degree are set at the state. Student tuition is only a small part of it when dealing with the multi billion dollar budget that a typical state university does.
Welcome to college....and life in general. You'll do lots of things in your life for no other reason than the authority of the institution says so...and if you want to play....you gotta pay.
I think allot of college now adays just decide to include "filler" classes for degrees and the result is that so many degrees require classes that will never in a million years be of any use in that field of study.
I have a friend who's a microbiology major, and she is required to take PHYSICS ONE AND TWO! Ummm....last time I checked a white blood cell didn't whip around the human body at the speed of light.
I also know a nursing student who had to take, get this, Botany 101. BOTANNY ??!! What the hell, is someone ever going to rush a rose bush to the emergency room?
Still, my personal favorite is the linguistics course that requires the students to take a class in cartography..."okay, you make a left at ancient Latin, keep on going until you get to a fork that says "Iberia", and bare right. Keep going straight until you hit 'Spanish', got that?"
Keep in mind, I am not talking about electives here. These are required classes. What bone head is running these schools anyway?
Anyone else have any example of useless classes that are required for majors?
I agree with you about Botany. I don't see how that should be required in any way.
However for microbiology, I can see why physics should be required.
Physics for biology isn't really useful in terms of real world applications, however some background is useful in understanding how some medical and biological devices work. It would be much harder to understand how NMR, Crystallization, MRI function (along with dozens of other organic chemistry/medical/biochemical techniques) without a basic understanding of physics/electromagnetism.
In addition, medical, dental and pharm schools requires at least a year of physics. Therefore by foregoing physics, you will be forfeting the option of applying to professional schools.
Overall, physics is probably one of the least useful subjects you'll learn as a bio major, however without physics you just don't have a great deal of flexibility. You cannot go to medical, pharm or any professional school and a basic knowledge of physics is required to understand some of the more advanced research techniques employed in labs (really depends on which ones, maybe you'll never deal with them at all... who knows).
Now if you want to talk about useless classes. How about a biology major who's forced to take Classical music? (It was either that or sign language)
I can't speak for private colleges and universities, but state ones are non-profit. They don't sit around thinking, "gee, what can we do to milk students of their money? I know! Let's make them take extraneous courses".
Most of their funding comes from the state govenment and research grants. The basic requirements, such as gen ed courses and minimum number of credit hours to make a degree are set at the state. Student tuition is only a small part of it when dealing with the multi billion dollar budget that a typical state university does.
Kudos to you for mentioning this. Too bad that the majority are going to over-look this fact. I will say this, the vast majority of private colleges are not-for-profit as well. And...
To the OP's question; you can disagree with a particular college department's idea of what they feel students in their particular course should study all you want. It is not going to change anything. The department chairs are the ones designing the programs, not you, and if you feel that these courses are BS, than why don't you get ahold of one of these department chairs and simply ask why these courses are required.
You do not have to go to College X, anyways, and I do not know why people b*tch about this sort of stuff.
As pointed out, 4 year degrees are designed to teach people many things, not just about the major. You can go to technical/vocational school to take only classes for a major (accelerated nursing school, etc...).
I had a math teach in high school who was a football player in high school. In his first college year he flunked out, but later he took a math seminar class and found it so interesting he ended up on that path and got a Ph.D. in math and became a math teacher. So if he only followed classes about his own interests (sports, etc...), he may never have been exposed to other subjects.
There are people who take classes and find that something else new is more interesting to them. I knew someone who was a great computer programmer, but ended up changing to some other science/medical field after learning more about it.
Overall, physics is probably one of the least useful subjects you'll learn as a bio major, however without physics you just don't have a great deal of flexibility. You cannot go to medical, pharm or any professional school and a basic knowledge of physics is required to understand some of the more advanced research techniques employed in labs (really depends on which ones, maybe you'll never deal with them at all... who knows).
The basics of physics should be taught to everyone. They are the laws of how the physical world works, if you don't understand those then you can't really understand basic science in the world (like driving a car).
That's why every cab driver is required to take physics.
I jest. Physics is a great plank of a liberal education, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it "should be taught to everyone." Most people function quite well without it.
That's why every cab driver is required to take physics.
I jest. Physics is a great plank of a liberal education, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it "should be taught to everyone." Most people function quite well without it.
I guess I'm talking about people that go to college (however, the cab driver might better understand fuel economy and friction with the road). Anyway, there are physics for non-majors (non-science) classes that are taught in many schools. People can function without it sure, but sometimes it's nice to know why things are how they are. It reminded me of the time I saw someone inflate their tires at the gas station, this was a Mustang of maybe 5 years old with custom wheels. The person did not know how to do it and over inflated the tires, and one blew up and became flat. The person didn't know what to do, so they just drove off cutting up the tire on the rim. It would be possible to make a course specific to real life situations and tasks.
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Ummm....last time I checked a white blood cell didn't whip around the human body at the speed of light.
