College used to primarily serve as the opportunity for students to discover and develop the skills they desire. However, over the past several years, universities and colleges alike have transitioned toward an institutional focus on life after college rather than education during college. In other words, for many, college has become a means to an end: obtain a degree to get a job. This new goal-oriented paradigm has dramatically changed academic environments, and whether students realize it or not, the ability for students to thrive and flourish has been greatly diminished.
Your average collegiate student looks to the future, to what job he wants and how to acquire such job after college. The first thing that comes to mind is competition. Thousands of people will apply to the same position as I will, so what will set me apart? How do I set myself apart from the rest? What will I put on my résumé? These questions dominate the thought of countless collegiate students, from first-years to fourth-years, and inevitably convince students to participate in and study subjects for the sole purpose of bolstering their future résumé. This technique — known as “resume packing” — works. Those most impressive on paper have the best chance of attracting a future employer.
Students that follow this mindset of “résumé packing” also tend to reach the conclusion that having one major simply isn’t enough. Having an extra minor or even a second major drastically changes one’s written appearance. This addition, which might add to the value of a student’s résumé, further limits students’ opportunities to explore other academic interests.
Of the myriad of students who declare one or more majors and/or minors, all severely limit their learning opportunities when enrolled in college. For example, in the simplest case of a student declaring one major and minor in the College of Arts and Sciences, his major typically would require 30 credits above the 2000 level and the minor would require 15 credits above the 2000 level. Moreover, while minors allow for any assortment of classes, majors require certain pre-determined classes, further limiting students’ freedom. Each school within the University also has its own specific area requirements. For example, the College requires 30 total credits spanning across all disciplines. So that’s 30 major credits, 15 minor credits, and 30 College requirement credits equaling 75 total credits. For the sake of argument we can also tack on 6 extra credits for the 1000-level courses most students take which won’t count towards the final major or minor. So for a student declaring one major and minor, roughly 80 credits out of 120 needed for graduation are already accounted for.
In simpler terms, if every class is three credits, out of 40 potential classes, students only choose 13 in all four years of college. If you’re a double major, 90 credits are predetermined and thus you only choose roughly 10 classes. Students do freely choose their majors and minors, but at the same time, the amount of credits required to fulfill such majors and minors cuts down on students’ abilities to experience the plethora of other interesting courses that the University offers.
In summary, I am not asking the University to completely change its major, minor and individual College requirements, but rather I am simply asking for a re-examination. Unfortunately, in the current system those who do choose to double major or minor dramatically limit their academic freedom. If the University simply lowered the number of credits required for majors, minors, and individual college requirements, students would continue to declare more than one major, thus strengthening their post-collegiate résumé, but they would also have more academic freedom. The University was founded by Thomas Jefferson, a renaissance man who avidly promoted the study of as many subjects as possible, but in the current system such exploration seems highly difficult.
Nate Menninger is a Viewpoint Writer.
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