General Education Essay -- Economics

General EducationExcept for a brief contraction in the early 1990s, the highereducation system in the United States has been growing steadily sincethe late 1970s. Roughly half of all Americans now have tended to(p)college at some point in their lives, and roughly a quarter hold apostsecondary degree.(In the United Kingdom, by contrast, less than 15percent of the creation goes to university.) There ar 14.5 millionstudents in American colleges and universities today. In 1975 therewere a little over 11 million in 1965 there were few than 6million. And yet when a person in higher education talk about itsconditions and its prospects, doom is often in their voices. There are triplet matters these people tend to disquiet about the future of liberal arts college the collapse(as its frequently termed) of the academicdisciplines, particularly the humanities and the seeminglyintractable disparity between the supply of Ph.D.s and the demand fornew faculty. There are more college student th an ever. Why does thesystem feel to many of the people who work in it as though it isstruggling? (Menand, Louis pg 219)Many people are flocking to college, but there not going there for atraditional liberal arts education. Liberal education is under siege.Critics, of whom there are many call it an overpriced indulgence forthe affluent few who do not have to worry about earning a living upongraduation. Fewer and fewer of todays undergraduates are pursuing theliberal arts, with most of them studying practical subjects likefinance, marketing, real estate and pharmacy.(Rimer, Sara) analyze just the practical subjects makes very good sense to mostpeople. Why bother studying things you wont use in your d... ...neral educationclasses for the most part are what people refer to as cake classes,which means easy grade. I personally like general education coursesthey help to round off a persons knowledge. It also serves as a breakfrom your major courses. Some people may like to jump right into theremajor to make gold fast my personal preference is to become the mostintelligent person I can in college so that I have more to introduce lateron in life.(This paragraph was taken from an earlier work of mine.)Works CitedGould, Stephen Jay, ed. The Best American Essays 2002. NY HoughtonMuflin, 2002.Menand, Louis. College The End of the Golden Age. Ed. Stephen JayGould. 219-231.Rimer, Sara. Justifying a Liberal humanities Education in Difficult Times.New York Times 19 Feb. 2003 B7Vargas Llosa, Mario. Why Literature? Ed. Stephen Jay Gould. 295-308