College General Education Requirements are Broken

General education in undergraduate programs is an essential but misunderstood and, in many cases, misguided feature that needs to be overhauled to better prepare students for the challenges of modern life. Too often, students who have graduated college and completed basic general education requirements lack fundamental life skills necessary to function as productive citizens. This is an embarrassing reflection on the education system in the United States.

The evolution of the historical core curriculum into the distribution system common today has given rise to a “general education” system in which students opt for the “easy-A” classes and do not acquire adequate training in dealing with everyday living. Academia, government, and business should come together to reform the general education paradigm to ensure students’ early foray into academia covers fundamental life management skills such as money management, interpersonal skills, nutrition, government and social management, entrepreneurship, practical problem-solving skills, and other necessities that many students do not realize they need until they leave college only to flounder in society.

A major contributor to the degradation of the relevance of general education in college has been the movement from a more specific core curriculum to a distribution system that allows students…