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I was a business major. Some of the most valuable courses I took, personally and professionally, were liberal arts requirements or free electives. Business is enormously complex an dynamic and I think a solid footing in liberal arts is a great way to teach people how to think.
The bachelors of science (and arts) courses outside of the major provide students with the basic foundation of various subjects to complete their education. Research at the masters and PhD level extends across several disciplines. If you don't have a foundation in those disciplines you won't be well prepared.
Good universities have enough endowment that tuition has little impact on their finances. That's why they give away so much in scholarships and financial aid to the point where students attend for close to nothing.
All schools do is push the Prussian system of memorization. (mostly outdated information) Not free thinking or anything else.
I voted no. Unfortunately, students these days need the reinforcement. They come out of high school not knowing basic history, geography, civics, science, math, or reading/writing skills.
If you're majoring in business administration or management, psychology and sociology courses help build a foundation that will make management courses easier. The same goes for criminal justice. If you plan to continue on to a graduate, healthcare program, then you're going to need some social science courses as well as math and natural science courses to meet prerequisite requirements. I couldn't imagine having students complete a computer science degree without a strong liberal arts background. It's more theoretical than applied professional e.g. accounting.
I think some general ed courses are needed. Now that "some" will be defined differently from person to person but to say NO general ed courses at all, I think is a mistake. The college I go to required 3 credits in a fine art (which I took some intro to art history class)- thus far it has been as useless as all get out and for the rest of life I cannot imagine that class coming into any practical use aside from my own pleasure. However it was only 3 credits, it was only 1 class. OP unless the general ed requirements are so extreme, let say requiring 9 credits of fine arts-which would waste 3 classes, then complain.
The more that I think of it I believe that college should be cut down to three years with one year of liberal arts and then two years of classes in your major. And I believe that in the future economic pressure will force colleges to be more career minded with less theory and more courses that mirror real world skills.
The more that I think of it I believe that college should be cut down to three years with one year of liberal arts and then two years of classes in your major. And I believe that in the future economic pressure will force colleges to be more career minded with less theory and more courses that mirror real world skills.
This is what one of the problems today is. For some reason people now have it in their minds that college is somehow supposed to be "job skills" and training. It has never been that, the point of college has always been to develop thinkers and people who could continue to learn, plan and manage while using those thinking skills college was supposed to have imparted.
Years ago I worked in industry and we'd have all these bright, full of **** and vinegar recent Accounting graduates get hired. The very first thing the plant's Comptroller told them was to forget everything they learned because they now were going to learn the way the company did it.
My degree was in Education. It got me off the factory floor into management for 2 different companies. The 2nd one was a mistake and that degree got me into Naval Aviation. My degree was not Math or Science. What it showed was that I could learn.
It was easier in the good old days when I was in college, in the 1960s, when jobs were easy to get after graduation and tuition was about $1000 a year, adjusted to today's dollars, than today when people spend $30K to learn how to think.
I suspect that in 20 years most people will be taking career orientated classes in college and most classes will be on-line. Many of the universities that teach students how to think will be out of business replaced with online colleges that teach job skills.
Quote:
Originally Posted by North Beach Person
This is what one of the problems today is. For some reason people now have it in their minds that college is somehow supposed to be "job skills" and training. It has never been that, the point of college has always been to develop thinkers and people who could continue to learn, plan and manage while using those thinking skills college was supposed to have imparted.
Years ago I worked in industry and we'd have all these bright, full of **** and vinegar recent Accounting graduates get hired. The very first thing the plant's Comptroller told them was to forget everything they learned because they now were going to learn the way the company did it.
My degree was in Education. It got me off the factory floor into management for 2 different companies. The 2nd one was a mistake and that degree got me into Naval Aviation. My degree was not Math or Science. What it showed was that I could learn.
It was easier in the good old days when I was in college, in the 1960s, when jobs were easy to get after graduation and tuition was about $1000 a year, adjusted to today's dollars, than today when people spend $30K to learn how to think.
I suspect that in 20 years most people will be taking career orientated classes in college and most classes will be on-line. Many of the universities that teach students how to think will be out of business replaced with online colleges that teach job skills.
Then they won't be colleges, they'll be trade schools. Problem solved.
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