General Education requirements can be torturous.
For some, watching paint dry may be infinitely more appealing than learning that next equation in algebra. Others may opt to have their nails ripped off before subjecting themselves to the next 100 pages of “literature.”
For this reason, I welcome the recently reduced General Education requirements for incoming freshmen.
The original and better plan, introduced by deans from the UCLA College, was to reduce science requirements to three classes total, including one lab.
But because of backlash from faculty members, students will still be forced to take four science classes.
Only one class will be required to be a lab, as opposed to the two labs that were previously required.
This reduction is scheduled to last for two years, by which time the university hopes to have a more permanent solution in place. By that date, I would like to see the requirement reduced to two science classes, with one of them being a lab.
This would bring freshmen requirements in line with what transfer students have to do by completing the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum.
Currently, students only have freedom within a subject to choose their GE courses, but considering the nature of higher learning, students ought to be able to choose the subjects themselves.
Without that freedom, an unfortunately large amount of students will unwillingly attend classes they find uninteresting.
Hearing about the easier transfer requirements was the deciding factor in my attendance at a junior college. Why subject myself to difficult science courses that didn’t interest me when I could go to a JC, save some money and have a much easier time while still being fully prepared for a four-year college?
It is unfair that incoming freshmen will be forced to take classes that will either drop their GPAs or bore them to tears while transfers pay significantly less money and take easier courses.
A drop in GPA is exactly what happened to Janet Lee, a fourth-year psychobiology student.
“As a science major, I struggled in my English GEs, and even though I did learn a bit from them, I wish I would have been given the freedom to choose to take more classes from my own field of study,” Lee said.
There is an argument to be made that exposing freshmen to a wide variety of subjects is important, and it’s entirely correct. North Campus dwellers should be exposed to a laboratory setting and the scientific method, and it’s important for South Campus dwellers to learn about society, culture and governance.
The central question is whether paying students at UCLA should be forced to have a varied academic experience and whether that varied academic experience loses its value if it’s pushed upon someone.
If you are forced to do something, chances are you won’t gain much from it. It’s certainly true that self-exploration is an integral part of the first two years of college, but the university’s GE requirements are not and should not be a forced form of exploration.
Barring that point, it may be argued that UCLA students don’t deserve a degree unless they can fulfill the requirements set by the university.
I see the logic here, but at the end of the day, students who are forced to take an English or science course that they don’t want to take will immediately go to bruinwalk.com, look for the easiest classes and hit snooze as they sleepwalk through the course. I can’t imagine that the faculty and teaching assistants enjoy having students who are unwillingly in their classes.
You can see it in action now ““ students on Facebook and their iPhones instead of listening to the professor.
Some students will never be interested in even their majors’ courses, but reducing the GE requirements will also cut down on the number of zombie-like visages in lecture and lab.
You may lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. So goes the time-honored saying, and so goes the lives of so many UCLA students forced to take English, science and humanities courses.