A majority, if not all, universities require students to take some form of University Core Credit. At Texas A&M University this requirement is filled by taking classes in categories such as American History, Communication, Creative arts, and Government/Political science. While some of these classes like dance appreciation or floral design can be interesting they are very unnecessary.
I detest history. It is my least favorite subject and I have taken history pretty much every year from about first grade to eleventh year. And the history courses I have taking are typically just the same information repeated over and over again. If I had a dime for every time I learned about Lewis and Clark I could fund my own expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase. So someone tell me why after all that, I am required to take 6 more credit hours of history in college. Learning about The Alamo or 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue will not help me toward my future STEM career.
Taking this wide range classes, some of interest some not, in high school can be useful when you do not know what you want to do with your future and need to experience different subjects. But by college you have a lot less time to figure that out or you already know, so you do not have time to take these useless classes. Sometimes these classes unrelated to your interested field of study are useful to help teach you study skills, but by college those skills should already be developed.
Sometimes these classes can be used to boost your overall GPA, but it can also hurt your GPA just as easily. A class like political science is required for a lot of universities as a core credit, but has to do very little or has no correlation to many students’ majors. If students are not very interested in subjects they are forced to take classes in, they are more likely to skip classes, not study, and as a result do poorly. If your POLS class is anything like the ones at A&M, it is not an easy A either.
Each credit hour is costing students a large sum of money. So why are we expected to pay for a class that is unrelated to our futures and is no interest to us. These core credit hours cost money and delays graduation. While I love college and am glad I get to spend time here, if my graduation was sooner, I would be able to go out into the work force, start making money, and pay back my loans sooner.
At Texas A&M about 50 of your courses credits have to come from these common core credits. If the university wants you to reach a certain number of credits before graduating, might as well make more of those credits relate to major coursework.
