I agree that learning about a broad range of topics is imporant for personl growth, im paying for a degree ina particular field. I shouldnt have to pay thousands of dollars for a gym class. Im perfectly capable of reading up on historical figures or learning about electrical engineering on my own time.
I understand your point. Still, as I've said, there are scientific studies that show that taking the breadth of courses actually improves you not only as a student but as a future member of the workforce.
Also, let's be honest. The vast majority of people would absolutely not pick up a history book if not forced to by their coursework.
Your ideologies make sense, but in real life it doesn't really work that way.
1. Unless you want to be a doctor or an engineer, when you go to college you're paying for a diploma, not the information you learn. Most of what you learn in the classroom isn't important.
This is completely true, and actually supports my point better than yours.
Part of the appeal to corporate America of a "well-rounded" student is the ability to approach problems in creative "outside the box" ways. You learn this in college by being exposed to material (and professors) with varied topics and methodologies. Again, if you were pigeonholed to a specific set of limited knowledge you'd have far less basis to think about answers from a different point of view from everyone who came before you.
College isn't about teaching you answers. It's about learning how to come up with your own.
2. The good Universities in America cost 10s of thousands of dollars a year. If I only need to take 60 credits of courses relating to my major, making me take another 60 credits in random subjects in order to graduate is asinine if the end result is that I need to pay an extra $30k-$60k. I'm not paying the University to be my life coach and encourage me to learn about African American studies or Greek Mythology. I'm paying to "learn" how to perform a trade.
If all you want is to learn a "trade" then there are trade schools in ample supply. Those are careers where there is generally not much "outside the box" problem solving. Replacing an alternator is a mechanical procedure. Taking blood in a physician's office doesn't allow a PA much in the way of alternative methods.
3. If you're going to school and don't have some semblance of what you want to do with your life, you shouldn't be in college. I didn't know what I wanted to do and I wasted a good chunk of my time and money with classes I didn't want, need, or care about. There are millions of kids every year who do the same. I understand that you need a degree to get a job in the U.S. but getting a degree to have a degree seems utterly pointless in my eyes. This idea really needs to change.
No, it doesn't. We're no longer a manufacturing or farming society. We need people who can work at desks or in laboratories. The problem isn't that a college wasted someone's money, it's that individuals aren't valuing the critical importance of going to college in contemporary American society.
A bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma. You can either choose to accept that, or be really good at smiling while asking if I'd like medium or large fries with my order. A high school diploma wasn't required when my parents dropped out. Times change.
4. Nobody who was an econ major took one Women's studies class and decided they wanted to study the history of woman over the past 200 years
But maybe that professor taught a student a new appreciation for women's issues. Maybe that inspired that econ major to study the economic impact of lower salaries for women. Maybe that study leads to a woman someday making the same money with the same respect as her male peers. Maybe that woman develops the cure to liver cancer thanks to receiving the same kind of funding her male peers receive.
That's the point of higher education. To create a better society with better overall knowledge and understanding of the world we live in.
