We hate GEs
You can probably guess why I'm writing this article: I am an undergraduate student at UCSB, I'm suffering through my general education classes, so I am writing this essay to let out my rant.
Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing, university curriculum requires students to take classes specific to their major (major curriculum) and additional subjects unrelated to their major (general education, GE for short), which is the subject to this essay. For me, I am a Computer Science major, so my major curriculum classes include data structure and algorithms, linear algebra, databases etc. and my general education classes range from literature and writing to history and environmental sciences.
At UCSB, there is roughly a 3:2 emphasis on major curriculum versus general education. So, it means to graduate, you might be taking 30 major classes and 20 general education classes. From what I heard, other universities seem to follow this emphasis ratio as well. We as students have much liberty in our general education curriculum given the variety of subjects to choose from, whereas major curriculum courses are restricted within one's major and thus have fewer options.
Given that general education only makes up a minority of one's undergraduate curriculum, and that there's a variety of subject options, why are GEs so annoying nevertheless? For me and almost all of my friends, we concur on our strong disgust against general education classes. People outside my circle hate general education to varying extent too; nobody ever said they love general education at least.
Why GEs exist, for the wrong reasons
If students hate GEs, why do they exist?
We need to look at it from the other side of the table: why do universities want GEs to exist?
I'm not a university administrator, but from my research, I think GEs exist because universities want:
- Students to first build strong foundational knowledge that then makes specialized major curriculum possible
- Students to simply have a breath of knowledge outside their specialized major curriculum
I believe these intents are justified, but GEs are not the answer.
Perhaps universities designed GE classes to first build strong foundational knowledge to then make specialized major curriculum possible. This reason sounds outdated. From modern k-12 education and the easily accessible information online, students coming into college already have decent foundational knowledge. People already spent years learning about english, math, some foreign language, history, and science. Major specific curriculum give major specific foundational knowledge too. For Computer Science, you will first learn about basic programming, then data structure and algorithms, and finally whatever domains it may be, from machine learning to databases. Forcing an Ethnic Studies GE class with the argument that without it students won't have sufficient foundational knowlege for machine learning engineering or advanced chemistry or other specialized major courses sounds too far stretched. The goal is already satisfied by k-12, the internet, and major specific lower division curriculum.
Then, maybe universities simply want students to have a breath of knowledge outside their specialized major curriculum just for the sake of breath. Unfortunately, students' incentives are very misaligned from learning about anything other than their major curriculum.
The Misaligned Incentives
Before World War Two, universities were meant to elevate the elite and the top scholars, and having a breath of elegant knowledge is necessary and relevant for these groups. After all, if you are at a fancy tea party and everyone there is talking about Baroque music and Byzantine literature, you are left out. If you are an English scholar studying Shakespeare, learning about English in the 1300s are very relevant too.
World War Two expanded universities for we the commoners, and to its credit, it's done it well. Thanks to universities, the average person's knowledge is much higher than a factory worker or farmer's knowledge a hundred years ago.
The breath of elegant knowledge for the elite still linger in university curriculum today in the form of general education, but they no longer appeal to the common class of people attending universities today. From a middle class student perspective, we don't care about none of that unnecessary breath outside our major. For most of us common undergraduate students, we just want one thing: job.
Say whatever you want about furthering critical thinking and intellectual curiosity outside of one's major, but if we can't pay rent and food after graduation, we are not taking any of those GE classes. After all, on our job application resume, only the most relevant major curriculum gets highlighted, and all the GE classes merely collapse into a part of the 4.0 scale number that represent our GPA.
True, GEs only make up a minority of one's undergraduate curriculum. But forcing one to do things that distract them from their main goals would give disproportional pain, so a 3:2 emphasis on major curriculum versus general education might result in 2:4 pain with the 4 coming from the general education. Imagine you come back from a day fighting off data structure and algorithms, Claude-prompting your next CS project to put on your resume, and preparing for the ICPC tryout, but all of a sudden you remember that you need to write that essay to analyze a medieval literature about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, that's disproportional pain right there. Sure, coding might be busy work, but at least you enjoy it, or you would lie to yourself to enjoy it because it's necessary for your job. What about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Just an unfortunate hurdle you have to jump through.
The Solution
A rant is a rant if it has no solution proposed. So, I'm going to talk in a voice like Greta Thunberg's to naively put forth my proposed solution, which might make my essay sound even more like a rant but why not:
Universities need wake up and realize that the majority of their attendees are not longer elites and top scholars pushing the bounds of humanity (or perhaps ruining it, if you are an Oil Barron), but rather the common class of people trying to use this college degree to find a job afterward.
We as the common class of people don't care about elegant Baroque music. We don't care about big words like critical thinking and intellectual curiosity. We care about one thing and one thing only: job.
General education can stay as optional, but it must not be a requirement anymore. The curriculum should be oriented and optimized for one thing and one thing only: job.
That's my solution to GEs: make them optional. And I'm going to push my talking even further beyond GEs on what an ideal university in the modern age should look like:
- Professor wise, they must consist of industry professionals as well as the academia. At the moment, the hiring focus seems to be exclusively on research professors instead of professors with hands-on industry experience. If the outcome for an undergraduate experience is job, it makes sense for the teachers to have hold jobs themselves too
- Curriculum wise, emphasize hands on learning and tie it to the conceptual. Some universities are already doing this well, some other universities are still focused heavily on the conceptual
- Drop GEs as requirements, and shrink departments that do not lead to jobs for its students. This is a cruel point, but time has changed. Universities must be oriented for jobs, and departments that are weakly oriented to jobs are no longer relevant and must earn reduced resources
- Expand research labs for undergraduate students, because hands-on experience in labs will contribute to job outcomes, even though an undergraduate lab assistant's role might not directly be relevant to their future job
- Fund student organizations more. Simply getting a 4.0 GPA is no longer enough for getting any jobs. People compete on the extracurriculars. Competitions, clubs, etc. are the distinguishing factors. And student organizations supporting these causes are massively underfunded. They should be funded as well as the curriculum itself because their importance have exceeded the curriculum itself
- Fund outdoor adventure and events for face to face social connections. This is becoming very needed in the post COVID social media age, and official attention and funding from the university seems necessary. And the moment, such events are self funded and organized by students
Some universities seem to be already on track for the university 2.0 vision to varying extent. I hope to see more universities waking up, realizing that people go to universities today because they need a job afterward, and optimizing its professors, curriculum, and extracurricular for jobs.
And yay, no more GEs.