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The University 's Argument For Requiring Students

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Few people know that in Europe, students seeing a degree only spend three years in university and graduate at the age of twenty, prepared to start their career with little debt and tons of experience. Unlike the European education system, the average American university requires students to study for four years, two of which are spent taking general education classes that don’t directly support their degree. These classes include college level writing, basic math, biological and physical sciences, humanities, social and behavioral sciences, historical studies, global diversity, and cultural awareness. While most of these are already courses covered in high school, colleges still require us to partake and pay for them, resulting in larger sums of debt and wasted time.
At Colorado State University, every undergraduate student is forced to take 14 of these required general ed classes- a total of 36 credits. But what is the purpose in doing so? What is the University’s argument for requiring students to study more general subjects that don’t necessarily correlate with our degrees?
According to CSU, the purpose of taking these classes is to “broaden [our] horizons” and to help students become well rounded (Cohn, 2013). This scheme is a perfect representation of good intentions falling short. Did they suddenly cease to remember that we, the students, have been undergoing general education for most of our lives, from kindergarten to this very moment? How well rounded can one

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