Students could graduate faster without curriculum ‘bloat,’ expert says

 Students haven’t been completing college in four years—that’s a bad thing. And since we can’t rely on Congress to make meaningful fixes—like when the House’s attempt to raise Pell Grant eligibility from 12 to 15 credits per semester fell by the wayside—reformers need to look elsewhere. That elsewhere is making cuts to the bloated core curriculum. Not all of it, of course—sadly, colleges still have to remediate what K–12 fails to teach—but much of the excess could and should be cut.

Few issues in higher ed get less attention than the growing time it takes students to earn a degree. The average time to complete a bachelor’s degree in the U.S. is now five to six years. That’s insane. The longer students stay in school, the more it costs taxpayers, delays workforce entry, and increases reliance on aid. As Jaison Abel and Richard Deitz of the New York Fed note, the clearest cost is tuition—about $6,500 a year after aid—but the bigger loss is time. These students could be working. Instead, they’re stuck in class.

One reason for the delay? Degree requirements are bloated. A standard bachelor’s degree requires about 120 credit hours, but at least 25 percent of those are unrelated to the degree itself, and probably 10 percent are completely useless.

At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, for example, students must complete 11 general education courses—nearly as many as some majors require. A core curriculum is supposed to enrich culture, cultivate character, and expose students to a broad base of knowledge. But categories like “Social & Cultural Diversity” often translate to semesters spent in courses unmoored from academic rigor and laden with ideological messaging, which not only keeps students in college longer but also delays maturity. Glenn Ricketts, a political science professor at Raritan Valley Community College and Public Affairs Director at the National Association of Scholars, says his students “often behave like middle schoolers—who endlessly defer making adult decisions about their lives.”

Some core classes offer real value. But requiring every liberal arts student to take multiple math and science courses—or STEM majors to slog through multiple English courses and diversity studies—is a waste. They don’t retain the material anyway. I had to take a geology class to meet my core requirements, and I can’t tell you a damn thing about a rock.

Students could graduate faster without curriculum ‘bloat,’ expert says | The College Fix