Anyone use Rate My Professors .com?

[sanantone]

General education is:

1. GE is designed to make sure graduates are well-rounded.
2. GE is designed to keep professors and some departments afloat by making students take classes in departments like Asian studies and philosophy. In my area, San Jose State University requires 12 credits of upper level GE that cannot be taken elsewhere on top of 39-45 LL GE credits.

I think the real reason for absurd GE requirements is #2 and #1 is just used as justification for #2. I'm sorry, but excessive GE takes money away from overcrowded classes in business, health professions, and computer science. Popular majors have sky high GPA requirements to declare while you can declare history with a 2.0 GPA. More students today are staying away from non-money making majors and flocking to $$$ majors like CS. So yes, use RMP to look for the easiest way out of GE and other similar requirements.

This is not true. The most popular majors have remained relatively stable. CJ is not a gen ed subject, it remains extremely popular, and it has a very high underemployment rate. Business administration/management remains as the most popular major, and this major also has a high underemployment rate. Some of the social sciences and humanities remain in the top 10. No one is forced to take Asian Studies and philosophy unless you attend a for-profit that maps out your gen eds due to limited options. If people didn't have to take a science, the only thing that would keep those departments afloat would be STEM and healthcare majors. There are hardly any STEM majors in the top 10.

Let's use logic, which is something one might improve upon in a course from the philosophy department. Students have to take a couple of humanities courses for their degree. An Asian Studies course is not going to be one of the more popular options unless it's at a school with a high Asian student population. In this case, you just might have a lot of students who are genuinely interested in the course. Otherwise, an Asian Studies department is not going to be supported by a couple of dozen students taking an intro course each year. Most universities are not San Jose State University.

For other subjects people complain about, such as psychology, they do not rely on gen eds at all. Psychology is the second most popular major. Sociology/psychology/anthropology are also a required prerequisite for most health professions. Even without them, there are plenty of people majoring in psychology to keep psychology departments afloat. While an undergraduate degree in psychology is not the most marketable degree, the mental health field has a shortage of licensed professionals who have a graduate degree.

The real reason for gen ed is tradition. Universities have been this way for thousands of years. They were never meant to be vocational schools. What I tell people who don't like gen ed is to not go to a 4-year college because it is not meant for them. They can get an AAS or certificate and be done with it.