Highways: The Backroads of College

Many students have experienced the feeling of frustration or annoyance after hearing they need to take a class so unrelated to their major or future career that they feel that the required class is just a waste. After all, would a physics major wish to learn about the horizon line of a piece of art, or a fine arts major learning about the ideal gas law. Therefore, colleges should provide students with three-year career tracks, in terms of required classes, thereby encouraging students to perform better in their classes and even convince students to stay in school to finish their degrees.

To be hired as any kind of professional, a degree is often prioritized, if not required to be selected for the job. To get that degree the average student must take around one-hundred and twenty credit hours’ worth of classes. Most of the classes being taken during the first two years of those one-hundred and twenty credits are not even related to the students major.

Instead, students are required to take core-curriculum classes which are classes designed to create better well-rounded students with a broader range of knowledge. These classes can include classes like college algebra, chemistry, or a programing class for someone with a liberal arts degree. While a person with a S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) based degree would still need to take classes such as English composition, a history class, or maybe even a philosophy class. To receive a degree in four years that means an average of fifteen credits a semester should be taken, with many of which being classes unrelated to that students major.

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However, given these requirements students are still taking longer and longer to complete these requirements, with many students taking over six years to finish a degree meant to be done in four.

If colleges were to lower the amount of time that is being spent on core-curriculum classes, then students would likely finish their degrees in a normal time span. Not only would shortening the time span for a student’s degree aid in getting them into the work place sooner, but it would also help drive down the cost of college. As Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, a reporter covering the economics of education and writer for The Washington Post, emphasizes in her article Why so many students are spending six years getting a college degree, “A recent Education Department study found that the average graduate had accumulated 138.4 credits by the time they received a bachelor’s degree, when 120 is usually sufficient. […] At an estimated cost of $361 per credit, those credits start to add up.” If a college was to require fewer non-major oriented classes to complete a major, the amount of money students would have to pay would be severely lowered by reducing amount spent per class.

Since fewer classes would be necessary, that also means that students would not have to take as many semesters of schooling to complete their degree. This would be a major factor in lowering costs of attendance. If a student didn’t have to attend an extra semester alone, they would avoid having to pay for a semester’s worth of tuition, housing, meal plans, textbooks, or other school related expenses. The NCIS, or National Center for Education Statistics, found the total average cost to attend a semester of college to be approximately $19,750. Since this method would likely lower the amount of profit colleges would make, many would likely argue that employers seek well-rounded workers for their businesses and that if a person specializes too heavily in one area that the new worker may not be able deal with the full scope of the job. If that were the case, then question the effective use of geography in a speech pathology field when diagnosing a swallowing disorder.

Maybe the knowledge on ancient texts like The Odyssey will help an engineer design his next project, or calculus will aid the actor. Steven Pearlstein, a professor at George Mason University and columnist for The Washington Post, when speaking of the worth of college reiterates that, “… too many college courses are focused on transmitting specialized knowledge […] and not enough on teaching students to analyze data, [or] think logically and critically […]” This then shows that classes aimed specifically to broaden a student’s knowledge and world view only leave a student with specialized knowledge, but that specialized knowledge is not focused on what the student is pursuing. Leaving the student like a magnifying lens unable to focus on one single area of information. With the way the education system works in the United States, high school is meant to be the testing grounds.

The place where one takes their free-trial of non-major oriented classes to see what does and doesn’t interest them. After that they can choose to go onto college, an education one decides to attend and must pay for, and therefore should have the ability to avoid things such as “exploratory” classes that are both a waste of time and money to the student. This is especially true if one already knows what they want to pursue. Of course, those who choose to come to college undecided would still follow the current traditional path of taking non-major oriented classes so that they can discover what subjects interest them. However, the others that do in fact know what they want to pursue should not be hampered by classes that they had no interest in the first place. Now high school students are attempting to avoid taking core-curriculum classes in college, that they already took in high school, by participating in dual enrollment, or early college programs. These programs essentially allow for high school students to take college core-curriculum classes while they attend high school so that they may earn credits for both forms of schooling simultaneously.

Though this is very beneficial to the students allowed into the program, most students are denied from the programs since they are in such high demand with limited program space. This limits the amount of people who can avoid taking core classes which is rather unfair. If every student was able to avoid taking core-curriculum classes in college, attendance rates would likely increase in Freshman bodies. Knowing that one could finish a college education in three years would likely give many students greater charisma and hope when attending college. The fact that less money would be spent, and that students would attend classes they want to pay for would greatly increase student performance and retention rates. As was found in the “ENGL1101 Survey Fall 2018,” a survey done by students in an honors English composition class at Valdosta State University that surveyed over two hundred students, found that at least three in four students were not surprised to learn that “…about 28% of VSU freshman do not return the next year.”

The same occurred when asked if they were surprised that close to half of all students leave college without a degree. This shows that students generally know how much core-curriculum classes are disliked in the first two years of attending college. However, after they finally get to take their major based classes students are nearly burnt out and lack any excitement for college and those classes that they originally wished to attend in the first place. It is this mixture of an early burden and a spark for learning lost too soon that causes so many to give up on their education when they are right at the finish line. If they were able to take classes on what they are interested in right from the begging, performance and retention would greatly increase. It is with this that colleges could likely make up any loss in income that they would experience from students not attending for that fourth year.

If they already lose almost half of the student body by the fourth year, the school would likely make greater profits from a better retained population that is more willing to keep shelling out money and loans to attend for a shorter time. In a world full of labels, students shouldn’t feel complacent wasting both their money and time solely to be labeled as well-rounded. Instead they could be gaining knowledge in the areas they are most interested. This is especially true since most students are only being taught specific knowledge in classes that are supposed to expand their knowledge, instead their focus is diverted from their true goal. Colleges should seek to streamline the path of students so that they may attain the education that their money, time, and hard work deserves.