General education classes, at least in my opinion, have been dreadfully hated since the beginning of time. For some reason, the college gods decided to curse students with the pain of having to endure irrelevant courses.

One of the reasons tuition is so outrageously expensive is because colleges force students to take gen. ed. classes. The average in-state tuition for a student is about $10,000 per year. The average amount of students in a regular college is around 4,500. When 4,500 students are all giving a school $10,000, that means the school is getting $45 million each year. For $45 million, you would think books would be included, but apparently not.

Without gen. ed. classes, students would only need to go to school for what is crucial to their major. Instead of spending four years, a bachelors would only take two and maybe life would be a lot less stressful. Besides, if you’re majoring in history, why in the world would you need to take a science course? If you’re an art major, there is absolutely no need for you to learn college algebra.

In fact, I feel like most of the population has no need for college algebra. I can understand for majors that include intense math, but I have never needed to use the quadratic formula in real life was, so why did I learn it? I’m still waiting on that dreadful day where I pass a speed limit sign that’s in some unnecessarily complicated formula. Then maybe I’ll be thankful I spent $853 on that math class I took two years ago.

I would much rather graduate by only taking the courses I absolutely need for my major and move on with my life with a little less debt burning a hole in my pocket. There are some interesting gen. ed. classes that I had fun taking, but if I am just dying to know what happened during the Great Depression, I could ask my grandmother or Google it.

I feel like gen. ed. classes are just another scam to keep students on campus so that the school and can milk as much money out of us as possible. The idea that students need to pay hundreds of dollars for classes that they don’t like, don’t care about and probably won’t ever use in their life just to get a piece of paper sounds like the biggest scam since snake oil to me. It only causes us to pile on debt.

We’ve already had to go through the pain of general education classes in high school. However, it’s worse now because it’s dreadfully more expensive. I already know the mitochondria is the power house of the cell, what else is there? The only real reason I can see need for gen. ed. classes that don’t correlate to one’s major is to have a great conversation starter or a fun fact to throw at someone. Why gen. ed. classes are enforced in college is an enigma overall. 

But who knows, maybe one day that fact you learned in science class will come in handy.