Have you ever heard someone complaining about why they have to take a core class completely unrelated to their major? Maybe you hate English and find it frustrating that you have to take composition classes in college to get an engineering degree. Or maybe you hate math and know you will never have to use derivatives and integrals once you score your communication degree.
As you well know, each student, no matter their major, at Mississippi State University has a set number of core courses spanning the different areas of academics. The question is, why do college students have required core courses when they have already planned a career path?
The logic behind it is to make each student well-rounded. With an astonishing 50 percent of first-year American college students changing their majors, it is important to expose each individual to a wide array of subjects in order to ensure they have chosen the most fitting career.
However, the students who are certain of what they want to do are also forced into re-establishing contact with the subject they thought they would never have to see again after tenth grade.
Isn’t this exploration of interests what high school is for? High school graduates all learned at least a bit about English, mathematics, sciences and history, as well as other areas academics.
In high school, it was beaten into our heads to identify our special talents and skills, and it was strongly encouraged to have a general idea of which direction we were going. Obviously, not everyone is going to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives by the tender age of 18. But if we give those students the ability to remain undeclared or uncertain, shouldn’t the declared and certain be allowed to focus on their area of concentration?
In Europe, as well as other places around the world, students attend “college,” the equivalent to American high school, in order to feel out different academic disciplines. Then they attend “university,” where they focus on their specific major and related fields.
A 1996 article by The New York Times reported several universities in America converted to this method of thinking by eliminating or greatly decreasing the strength of a core curriculum.
The truth is, people are not created equally. Some people possess talents in one respect, and others possess them in another. Oftentimes, people who are math/science-oriented cannot fully grasp the beauty of poetry or literature. Similarly, those of an English-based nature do not recognize the sheer genius of the universal function of numbers, or the reliability of scientific explanations.
Some do not have a knack for the world of academia at all, but rather a gift for a trade or technical skill.
This is not to say that everyone falls into one category with no overlap, but generally speaking, not everyone excels in every subject.
That being said, it’s unjust to assume everyone needs to learn a little bit about everything before getting down to business, especially since that exploration was already handled in high school. If you are clear about your major and then all of a sudden change your mind, it would be fair to start over academically.
Consequently, it would perhaps work in everyone’s favor if majors were declared with a contract to complete their intended plan. This would really make students think seriously about their choice instead of just picking a major that sounds good.
The elimination of core courses would allow students to take classes that mean something to them; when you care about what you’re learning, you tend to remember it and apply it to whatever you do. It would obliterate the animosity against other subjects and stimulate respect, as opposed to resentment, for students of other schools of study.
Most importantly, it would let students learn as much as they could about what they genuinely want to learn in the short amount of time they have. And after all, do you really care if your doctor had to take a fine arts elective?
Wendy Morell is a freshman majoring communication. She can be contacted at [email protected].