In her Dec. 4 column, Taylor McCune raised a lovely point about most of our recent American presidents. None of them have degrees in political science: President-elect Obama — Harvard Law, Clinton — Yale Law, Bush II — Harvard Business, Bush I — Yale Business. Yet, despite a lack of study in political science, they all became presidents of the most powerful nation on Earth. In her words, “It wasn’t their majors that made them successful, it was their entire life experience.”
The “success” of those various presidents can be argued to no end, but they all rose to the top through their “life experiences,” not a class in U.S. diversity or natural sciences.
The only thing I am disappointed by in my look through the new General Education Requirements is that they did not eliminate more.
Yes, college should be a broadening experience — I doubt anyone would argue that point. But what does not make sense is an engineering student being required to take even 16 hours in CHASS, or a CHASS major taking 13 hours of mathematical and natural sciences.
I am definitely not saying that I dislike taking a history, political science or literature class to supplement my mechanical engineering classes. In fact, I have loved almost every elective I have taken while at N.C. State. But the notion that I should have to take these classes is ridiculous.
In even a cursory glance at other University systems around the world, it quickly becomes apparent that we are pretty much the only country that tries to force feed our students General Education classes.
In European systems, for instance, students specialize from the beginning of their course, thereby avoiding all the General Education “fluff” that comes as part of a degree from an American-style institution.
Not only are you saving yourself the hassle of classes that you do not enjoy, but the load on each of the colleges within the University is reduced.
According to Antony Harrison, department head of English, his department teaches more than 17,000 students a year — a figure accounting for well over half of the University’s total population. Just imagine how much better CHASS could be if they only had to teach classes to CHASS students.
The quality of the classes would increase and the quality of the degree would increase. And honestly, does anyone really care if an English major can do calculus? Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t the inability to do advanced math the reason a lot of CHASS majors are taking a humanities degree?
The goal of any University is to produce students capable of being productive contributors within their field of interest, the reason we are here and the reason this institution is here. We do not have a nationally ranked engineering program because those students can fluently converse about Proust and Hemingway — it is because we produce solid engineers.
Ask the University to let you study for what you came here to study. Have the GER requirements knocked down from the 39 to 40 that were approved to 21 total hours. That would give students an opportunity to explore electives but to focus more fully on the reason we are here, OUR majors.
Send Russell your thoughts on the General Education Requirements to [email protected].
