At Public Universities, Fewer Students Graduating Within 4 Years

[anvi]

Anyone know about a good career-fair I can go to?

[anvi]

Fair warning: soapbox alert.  If you don't want to read a dissenting opinion from a fuddy-duddy college teacher, please skip.

I'm going to put in a vote for gen-ed courses here, and not just because I teach them, but because I got a lot out of them in college.  While it's true that European universities don't require much outside of one's major, it's also true that their high schools are in far better shape than ours, so by the time students get to college, their general education backgrounds are far better than ours at the equivalent level.  They also have trade-school tracks that are different from the academic high-school to college track.  But there are more than just structural reasons for gen-ed courses.  My first college teaching job was remedial comp at Temple University, and the number of native-English speakers who could not, after twelve years of schooling, write a complete sentence or a coherent paragraph was astounding.  For jobs you will likely seek after college, good communication skills are important.  On top of that, classes in English lit, if you read the materials assigned, can often reveal a lot about human nature that is both valuable and that you couldn't get from other sorts of classes, even psych classes.  Sociology classes teach not only about the field's own methods, but about fallacies that are rampant in advertisement, media and public discourse.  Psychology classes, when done right, can teach you to be aware of your own motivations and how you've responded in relationships given what kinds of relationships prevailed in the homes people grew up in.  History courses can be really important in separating fact from fiction when it comes to our cultural or national pasts.  The purpose of a liberal arts education is not just to teach people trades.  You have the whole rest of your life to just pursue success and in turn to be treated like a commodity in society.  Liberal arts gen-ed courses are meant to make good citizens and better people out of us.  I know, from many years of teaching, that it's hard to appreciate them when one is young and restless to get out there and make a living wage.  But, fortunately, the world is a lot more interesting than just that, and gen-ed courses are an opportunity to find that out.

End of pitch, stepping off of soapbox and heading back to the search for a good career fair.  Just sayin', JMO.