The overall purpose of college is supposed excite about you about a particular career, be a knowledge builder of your chosen career path and expand your horizons upon which you will use as a foundation for the rest of your life. Unfortunately colleges today completely disregard these fundamental principles. The administration members of college today solely believe in improving the bottom line of the school, with less regard as to the success of the student. While this a surely a bold statement to say on such a large sector of society, I will demonstrate through supported evidence and proven research, that the average college today has many deep seeded fundamental flaws.
There is a concept in the college world today which is called a core curriculum. This a set of basic core classes that a student must take in order to graduate. These core classes typically include (but are not limited to); math, social science, hard science, art, English, a language class, a history class and a humanities class. This is in addition foreign language and a diversity course, which many colleges have adapted into their core curriculum. All in all, these courses can typically add up to a dozen or more classes throughout ones college experience.
Now let’s take a step back and look at this objectively. These dozen or so classes have absolutely no relevance on your particular major and is not your primary interest, not why you signed up for college for, yet the college is manditating that you take them. These classes are simply a way for the college to improve their bottom line and to line their pockets by making students pay for classes they are not interested in. The administration of course will never admit this. They will try to say that these classes are necessary for you in order to succeed in college, and one adviser even said that these courses will turn you into a “well rounded” student. This is undoubtedly false as these particular classes are not intended to be a class where one learns, discovers, and absorbs the material. Rather these classes are short and to the point, which teach you the most basic knowledge of that subject (which one probably covered mostly in high school). So while these classes are more or less a basic repeat of high school with a slight college twist, they do nothing more than take up large chunks of time in a student’s day. Moreover they do nothing in helping the average student decide on a career path, since these 101 classes are so basic. To sum up, the core curriculum is a large waste of time, tuition money, and resources. I believe the colleges miss this crucial step and that is the cause for great resentment at the college world at large.
A second thing colleges sorely lack is the ability to excite the student about their particular career. This is done in part by the fact that there are so many tests in a particular class. The effect of this will be that the average student will end up studying exclusively for the exam and not actually studying and learning the material for the material itself. This cause and effect will not interest the average student what is being taught in class, rather the student will be turned into a test zombie (A test zombie is defined as a student who crams for the exam a day or 2 before, and has no recollection of the material 5 minutes post-test)
While this mentality cannot be blamed squarely on the administration of the college, they play a large role in it due to the part that they demand from the professors a certain amount of tests per class. The professors of the school are accomplish in this, in the fact that they indeed give that ridiculous amount of tests, and more so base their class around the exams. Just to give an example, the teacher states; “So and so will be on the exam, and you need to know this and this, but the other section you don’t need to know, because it’s not on the exam”. Or the professor will say “why are you asking me so many questions about this, it’s not on the exam!”
Let me ask you this: Is this College? Is this what we signed up for? By the professor saying “this will not be on the exam” truly excite you about college and the material being taught? Is this helping me choose a career path? Is this assisting me expand my horizons? The obvious answer to all this resounding NO.
College students today are more stressed out than ever before[1]. According to a study by Brown University, college students are the most sleep deprived people in the country[2]. An article by Anias Tobar describes the deplorable health of students during midterms and finals.[3]A core curriculum and a constant barrage of tests do nothing to assist that effort. Colleges today should abolish the core curriculum and stop the constant barrage of exams which are overwhelming college students. Let us go back to the days where college was an exciting place, a place to discover yourself, and a place to indeed grow and learn, and through this will create a great college system to be copied for generations.
[1]www.healthland.time.com/2011/01/27/why-are-college-students-reporting-record-high-levels-of-stress/ [2]www.brown.edu/Student_Services/Health_Services/Health_Education/common_college_health_issues/sleep.php [3] http://fsu.uloop.com/news/view.php/34843/is-it-really-impossible-or-just-hard-to-eat-healthy-in-college
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