NJCU's Major Curriculum Changes Needed
By: Daniel X. Rivera
Issue date: 4/15/10 Section: Opinion
New Jersey City University's mandatory area courses claim to mold a student into a well-rounded person. The more concentrated a program is the more one should expect that chosen major to fully prepare a student for a position in a professional field once that degree is obtained.
I fail to comprehend how a seemingly endless number of area courses ranging from geography to philosophy will lead to a better understanding of life in a practical sense.
Students pay to attend many classes covering topics that most will hardly remember let alone actually apply in their daily lives.
This excess academic fluff prevents students from taking more classes relating to their majors, instead forcing them to wait over a span of several extra semesters before completing the core curriculum, as class scheduling conflicts or a lack of availability remain steady.
I understand higher education is a business first and foremost but perhaps what we all need is more compassion for the student, namely, those students who struggle to pay for their own education through loans and other means.
Once area courses are out of the way, students can look forward to those classes that go toward their major requirements, right? Not necessarily.
There is such a heavy emphasis on becoming 'well-rounded' that in most cases one's most significant curriculum gets short-changed in favor of a meandering lesson plan that has little to no honest relevance to the major.
As an English major specializing in Journalism I have experienced this firsthand.
Study of Literature, a course on the English track list, was dramatically altered a few semesters ago and now cannot be completed unless an exit exam is passed. It does not matter how well a student performs throughout the semester, a failing grade on the test leads to repeating the course. This alone is unsettling but the course itself is also troubling.
Study of Literature, as do nearly all English major requirements, primarily covers archaic poetry with extensive analysis. What is most puzzling is how the main curriculum calls for English majors to spend so much valuable time being graded on grasping the structure and 'correct' meaning of poems according to a professor's guidelines, when poetry is an art form completely open to interpretation.
I fail to comprehend how a seemingly endless number of area courses ranging from geography to philosophy will lead to a better understanding of life in a practical sense.
Students pay to attend many classes covering topics that most will hardly remember let alone actually apply in their daily lives.
This excess academic fluff prevents students from taking more classes relating to their majors, instead forcing them to wait over a span of several extra semesters before completing the core curriculum, as class scheduling conflicts or a lack of availability remain steady.
I understand higher education is a business first and foremost but perhaps what we all need is more compassion for the student, namely, those students who struggle to pay for their own education through loans and other means.
Once area courses are out of the way, students can look forward to those classes that go toward their major requirements, right? Not necessarily.
There is such a heavy emphasis on becoming 'well-rounded' that in most cases one's most significant curriculum gets short-changed in favor of a meandering lesson plan that has little to no honest relevance to the major.
As an English major specializing in Journalism I have experienced this firsthand.
Study of Literature, a course on the English track list, was dramatically altered a few semesters ago and now cannot be completed unless an exit exam is passed. It does not matter how well a student performs throughout the semester, a failing grade on the test leads to repeating the course. This alone is unsettling but the course itself is also troubling.
Study of Literature, as do nearly all English major requirements, primarily covers archaic poetry with extensive analysis. What is most puzzling is how the main curriculum calls for English majors to spend so much valuable time being graded on grasping the structure and 'correct' meaning of poems according to a professor's guidelines, when poetry is an art form completely open to interpretation.
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