I had such high test scores that I actually tested out of needing to take college level English classes. When I go to apply to graduate I was told that I didn’t have enough credits and I explained that’s because I didn’t need to take English. I was then informed you still need a certain amount of credits to graduate so while I didn’t need to take English I needed to take something. I was forced to take a bowling class over the weekends to make up the credits in time in order to graduate. You pay for each credit a class is worth so I felt like that was such a waste of money.
The original reasoning was because they want to think they are giving you a more well rounded education or giving you other life experiences as to not leave you with such a narrow scope of education. It’s a nice idea if it weren’t for the crippling cost of school and inability to guarantee that your degree will land you a job that will pay off your student loans in addition to costs of living.
Ironically this is the opposite of my education from Scotland, a very focussed course with most of the classes being mandatory and not chosen by me (even the elective classes were from a prescribed list that related directly to the course), but it was free.
America has schools like that, they aren’t free but they are focused usually called tech schools. Most major universities fall under a liberal arts education which the goal is to provide a diverse well rounded education experience.
This was engineering education in the US. We had a total of two electives. One social science elective and one open. Government, history, and English are required. Other than that the only options we had were for choosing our subspecialty.
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u/kkkilla 1d ago
I had such high test scores that I actually tested out of needing to take college level English classes. When I go to apply to graduate I was told that I didn’t have enough credits and I explained that’s because I didn’t need to take English. I was then informed you still need a certain amount of credits to graduate so while I didn’t need to take English I needed to take something. I was forced to take a bowling class over the weekends to make up the credits in time in order to graduate. You pay for each credit a class is worth so I felt like that was such a waste of money.