Universities shouldn't be able to force students to take nonsense liberal arts courses that have no relation to their major. For example, a STEM or Business major shouldn't have to take a feminist literature course in order to graduate.
As a recent college graduate that had to deal with this, it was infuriating to have to spend money on these nonsense liberal arts courses. The only reason universities force students to take these courses is to indoctrinate them, and because they realize they can milk Pell Grants and Federal loans. These pointless courses can be replaced with courses that actually relate to the student's major, and you could probably eliminate an entire years worth of courses just by getting rid of them (thus turning a 4-year degree into a 3-year degree).
I also fail to understand why universities are able to offer useless majors to students like "Women's studies", sociology, anthropology, philosophy, etc. Universities profit immensely by taking advantage of clueless students, and then these same students wonder why they can't land a job after graduating.
Or go back to teaching the foundations of Western Civilization again. If they removed all the woke Marxist BS and restored ancient history, philosophy, classic literature and art history, etc., that would be a good thing.
Exactly. And I think the vast majority of h.s. grads are woefully ignorant of most of those things. It may seem like “fluff” to the strictly-functional STEM types, but it’s what keeps society (the social aspects of society, I’m not talking roads and communications infrastructure here) from slumping into vulgarity and tribalism. It was once, in fact, understood to be the case, which is why those classes are there. They just need to be reclaimed.
Knowing the foundations of Western Civ, including art and literature used to be a basic requirement for being considered educated. The founders certainly knew all that stuff from Cicero to Chaucer and etc. Our current credential mills do not produce educated citizens. It's not only the indoctrination that's been added, it's also what has been removed. Which we ought to be restoring to the curriculum.
The same folks advocating cutting fluff are the ones scratching their heads that people Don’t understand basic civics, or history. The issue isn’t the study of humanities, but the corruption of it.
I do think we need to charge appropriately for course study. A humanities degree should not cost the same as a engineering one. Business shouldn’t even be a study, that an applied field at best. Really just trade.