re: University of Alabama proposes changes to core curriculum: Lit and History not required

Just an extension of what is going on in private industry. They can't hit certain targets, so they, being actual racists, believe that they have to lower standards to hit those targets.

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Do you write for the Advocate?

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Read the rest of the post. The reduction is merely for hours. They can elect to take courses in other fields and skip lit and history.

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I think every university should make public speaking and business writing a requirement.

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I agree on Business Writing but not on Public Speaking.

I used to think Public Speaking should be required as well but I've talked to a bunch of people in my professional life that talk about their Speech or Public Speaking classes with absolute horror and because of that it did them no good.

I think a better class that should be required is "business communication" - or interpersonal / small group discussion. This can be for meeting prep, business discussion (for future co-workers), interview skills, etc. The biggest issue with "Public Speaking" is there are so many introverts in the world that will never really communicate in their professional fields with more than 3-4 people at a time, so we need to work on those skills much more than 8+ people at a time.

And it continues...

Call me an old man (graduated from LSU in 1986 with a BA, then got my master's from Georgia Tech in 1989) but they are simply making it easier on students and in the process dumbing down our society.

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Reduction of writing-intensive requirement from 6 to 3 credit hours

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It's a constant trend, but nothing new. When I was at Georgia Tech, I was talking with my then-girlfriend's boss, a 1970 Florida State grad. He told me that he decided to pursue a criminal justice major at FSU because he found that was the one track he could take in which he never had to write anything, just take multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank tests. He boasted that he never wrote an essay or paper or had to buy a blue book his whole stint in college.

Idiotic.

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literature or a history course

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From my experience, these were BS, easy courses to fill our your schedule anyways.

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Not at Auburn. A year requirement of History and your answers for tests were long-form essays. Typically 3-4 questions covering a period in world (or european) history. It would always take a couple of weeks to get your test grade back because the TA's had to grade by hand. A required year of Great Books (the name of the class) that was like an english comp class with with a large reading component. Also long-form essay tests. This was late '90's so it might be watered down shite currently for all I know.

Probably not the worst idea in the world.

Yes, a university experience/education should expose you to a multitude of areas, but I certainly think that more classes in major are a good thing.

I graduated Auburn with an Information Systems Management degree and walked out taking five or six courses in the college of business that focused on computers (one being an intro to telecom and networking, the others were in depth on Java, PHP, databases [Oracle and SQL], and IT project management). Now I had done several programming courses in college of engineering before changing majors.

I am also of the mindset of why should a history major who plans on researching/writing/teaching for a living need to take anything other than a basic level business math or stats class? There is a 99% chance they won't need any type of calculus or advanced math (linear differential equations) in their planned career, so why make them suffer through it and possibly hurt their overall GPA.

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f you don't actually want to learn, you really shouldn't be going to a 4 year university.

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Most GER's could be done solo, or online. Could probably knock a quarter or more out in High School.

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yup. that would be the correct assessment. How many of us have taken BS classes out of "necessity" that we dont actually use in our day to day jobs now.

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Many undergrad programs should only take two - three years at most.

Good. Focus more on actual classes for your major.