2 ms·

What I'm saying works just fine. If you want humanities courses, get a humanities degree; If you want chemistry, get a chemistry degree. If you want both, get b

What I'm saying works just fine. If you want humanities courses, get a humanities degree; If you want chemistry, get a chemistry degree. If you want both, get both degrees. Lots of people double major, or get more. One of my friends completed five non-trivial, non-overlapping majors in college! This would work so much better if the majors were pure and no general requirements interfered. It works both ways. I wanted less humanities and more science, but there are plenty of people that don't want to take a single math or science class in college if they can avoid it. Why force people?

_delirium 16y ago
Well, my observation is that schools where the general requirements have been reduced have allowed the majors to fill the space by upping their own requirements, whereas schools with more general requirements have fewer per-major requirements, so it seems to be a tradeoff. I personally greatly prefer the 2nd approach, e.g. Harvey Mudd has 1/3 general science/engineering core, 1/3 humanities/social-sciences, 1/3 your major. Contrast with many engineering schools, where your major takes up >2/3 of your courses, which I think is a rather oppressive way to do things. It's possible there could be a school with fewer of both kinds of requirements, where students get a build-your-own-major sort of deal. But if we're going to choose between more general requirements or more per-major requirements, I greatly prefer the first: to me, the 2nd ("all CS majors must take systems, theory, databases, and 2 of the following 4 classes") is a lot more compulsive, and generally results in useless specialist classes being added based on who's politically powerful within the department.
- maxharris 16y ago
  > to fill the space This is another deep problem with education. When people are forced to become "educated", school devolves into a holding pen. Why is it that we all went to college for four (or more) years, other than tradition?

_delirium 16y ago

Well, my observation is that schools where the general requirements have been reduced have allowed the majors to fill the space by upping their own requirements, whereas schools with more general requirements have fewer per-major requirements, so it seems to be a tradeoff. I personally greatly prefer the 2nd approach, e.g. Harvey Mudd has 1/3 general science/engineering core, 1/3 humanities/social-sciences, 1/3 your major. Contrast with many engineering schools, where your major takes up >2/3 of your courses, which I think is a rather oppressive way to do things. It's possible there could be a school with fewer of both kinds of requirements, where students get a build-your-own-major sort of deal. But if we're going to choose between more general requirements or more per-major requirements, I greatly prefer the first: to me, the 2nd ("all CS majors must take systems, theory, databases, and 2 of the following 4 classes") is a lot more compulsive, and generally results in useless specialist classes being added based on who's politically powerful within the department.

maxharris 16y ago
> to fill the space This is another deep problem with education. When people are forced to become "educated", school devolves into a holding pen. Why is it that we all went to college for four (or more) years, other than tradition?