Texan Mosaic

by SHELBY MORGAN//Staff Writer

The general education requirements that college students have to complete are ridiculous.

Most of the courses that are required have already been taken in high school and are just a repetition of what has already been learned.

Typically, you spend 12 years in school learning basic fundamentals such as math, reading, and writing. You know your strengths and weaknesses by the time you graduate. When you go to college, you are going into a certain field and should be able to focus on the career path you have chosen.

On average, students have to have 42 semester hours of core credits in order to graduate. So, on top of the time spent learning these basic skills, students have to spend another two years learning some of the same things they learned in high school.

I think that it would be a more beneficial use of students’ money and financial aid funds to cut the required courses, or amend them to better educate students. Requiring students to take a financial planning or tax preparation course would make more sense than College Algebra or Statistics.

As a journalism major, I am never going to need to know the Pythagorean Theorem, or how to graph a circle, in order to write or edit a column effectively. I personally know that I am terrible at math. Therefore, I would never attempt to be an engineer. The only thing having to take an Algebra class does is add stress to my life.

While it may be beneficial for an engineering major to play sports or take a music class, it isn’t going to be very beneficial to his chosen career choice and should therefore be an option, and not a requirement

I don’t mean to just pick on the math requirements, because I also don’t agree that two science courses should be required, or that there should be creative arts requirements. Even if I did retain the information I have learned in class, when am I ever going to put it to use as a journalist?

Colleges need to teach students to have life skills that will benefit them and focus more on students’ majors. A class on how to effectively create a resume or compose a business e-mail would be a tremendous help to a college student who has never had to create one before.

There is a serious problem among college graduates who are applying for jobs that either lack the education or lack the experience required for many entry-level positions today. Using the time spent in Art Appreciation could be better spent preparing for the workforce.

A class that teaches basic life skills, like how to change a tire or how to perform CPR on someone who is choking, would be very useful in everyday life. Many nursing schools require students to take an etiquette class to prepare them for job interviews and real-life scenarios that they may encounter.

I don’t believe that all of the general education requirements should be removed or changed. But there is an issue with the current requirements that should be addressed by the state.