Do We Need Our GE's?
By Nehemiah Slaughter
Corsair Editor-in-Chief

• Con:

In high school, academics were one of those things that remained constant and structured. During those hectic and chaotic years of adolescence it was comforting to know that each semester would be spent learning a variety of different subjects and fields of study. After four years of a broad introduction into all forms of life and study, one finally is able to make that life changing choice: what do I want to do with my life? What do I want to study and pursue as a career? However, little do most high school students know, the pursuit of these queries will lead back to the same classes and subjects they had already endured.

After intense meditation and mental reflection, a single life long objective is formed, e.g. "I want to be a lawyer," "I want to be a diplomat," "I want to start my own clothing business."

Little do these people know their first stage in accomplishing these goals will FORCE them to learn, memorize, and regurgitate a lot more than they originally intended.

Upon entering their primier years of college, students are slapped with the useless IGETC requirements by college counselors - the messengers of the all-knowing college administrators across the UC system.

These administrators apparently feel that it's necessary to waste students' time, money and energy by shoving six levels of General Education requirements down their throats.

What could possibly be useful to business majors by taking a history class that they were already introduced to in their sophomore high school years, or to take music or biology classes?

It would probably take a couple hundred pages to explain the economic and social benefits for setting up such a system of general education courses . but we won't go there.

Well, just a few points include: college professors are able to take more money from students for their books; universities gain more revenue from students taking more classes, and undergraduate and graduate programs and schools can use GE classes as ways to weed out people - increasing competitiveness exponentially every year. The list grows excruciatingly long, all in the name of well rounded members of society.

This attempt to create a society of well-rounded workers has been and always will be ill fated. A world where everybody is well-rounded and nobody specializes in anything is a world destined for economic and social collapse.

Possibly one of the worst points on this list is the fact that students who do well in their core major classes are not being accepted to the UC system, because their GE classes are not up to par. These kinds of acceptance denials simply add to the number of college dropouts, and people without advanced degrees. It's the first steps to increasing an already overpopulated working class.

Its hard enough dealing with college as an overall concept without extra unnecessary stress such as classes that don't apply to person's major, a person's passion. Such requirements do more harm to students than help. They merely generated more stress, frustration and anxiety in a world where more and more people turn to Starbucks and prescription drugs to keep going into those late hours. It's simply not worth it.