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“General Education has not been systematically reviewed since its inception 15 years ago. We, as a faculty, have no way of knowing whether our general education curriculum is working.”
The above statement is the beginning to an executive summary of a campus-wide survey that was created in order to assess the general education program at the University of Maine. While it may seem startling that the professors administering this program are clueless about their own curriculum, in reality it just affirms a thought that nearly every student at UMaine has had at least once: The general education program is an expensive and misguided waste of time.
The general education program at UMaine requires that students take 43 credits (excluding the senior year capstone experience) in a variety of subject areas ranging from the natural sciences to the fine arts. Those who have already earned an undergraduate degree, even from another university, do not have to complete this curriculum in order to earn a second degree. The curriculum was created to ensure that all UMaine graduates are “are broadly educated persons who can appreciate the achievements of civilization, understand the tensions within it, and contribute to resolving them.”
Several problems exist within the current program that have made it more harmful than helpful to students: the length of the program and cost of tuition, lack of oversight, and the redundancy of content from high school courses. Rather than widening the educational perspective of the university community, the problems inherent with the current curriculum leaves students uninterested and broke.
According to umaine.edu, tuition and fees for state residents is $10,142 a year, which extrapolates out to a whopping $40,568 after four years. And, given the university’s own estimate that the general education program consumes a third of those four years, each student spends slightly more than $13,500 to complete the curriculum. While this may not seem an exorbitant amount to ensure a broadly educated public, it is important to remember that the university has no idea if this is even the case.
What is known, however, is that students nationwide are taking on massive debt in order to fund their college educations. The Project on Student Debt estimated the average debt of graduates from the UMaine in 2008 to be roughly $24,330 apiece. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Education reported that the number of college graduates that entered repayment of their loans in and then defaulted rose to 7 percent in 2008.
Given that students are finding it increasingly difficult to pay back their student loans, one would suppose that colleges would be interested in helping to reduce this financial burden. After all, the purpose of college is to become better educated in order to lead a successful life, a goal that becomes all the more difficult if the experience bankrupts the student.
But what about the broad perspective that is touted as the necessary driving factor behind a general education program? As The Washington Post reported, several universities in the United States have been weighing the idea of cutting back on general education and offering a three-year degree program in an effort to save students time and money. This has been the model at the esteemed Oxford and Cambridge universities in England. Even in the state of Maine, Bates College offers a successful three-year degree program.
If so many other universities around the world are recognizing the benefits of cutting general education, what is to say this would not work here?
The real heart of the issue is that the university demonstrated just how much it really cares about the general education program when it neglected to review the curriculum for nearly two decades. It would be unfathomable for a student to take the mission of the program to heart when the very faculty that teaches the curriculum has not taken the time to review its own material. However, this is exactly what the faculty expects from the student body.
At a recent presentation by the General Education Standing Committee, a student asked whether or not the university had considered a three-year degree program in light of the findings. The response was patronizing amusement, with the panel of faculty “experts” stating that it would be illegal for this to happen as the university is a state-funded land-grant institution. However, a call to Barmak Nassirian, a spokesman for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, revealed that it would only take the approval of the state legislature for this to happen.
Not only is the program incredibly unguided, but it also is a major cost for one of the most financially vulnerable groups in society. And while the university has admitted the program lacks any review or oversight whatsoever, its insistence that a three-year degree program as a solution is impossible only further demonstrates the lack of care for the student body.
If UMaine truly cares for its students and hopes to see them lead successful lives after graduation, immediate action needs to be taken to revise the general education curriculum as soon as possible to avoid any further unnecessary expenditure on a terribly managed program.
