Written By Nicolas Costa
The vast majority of college students are familiar with general education requirements. Most colleges require students to take a particular selection of classes across several disciplines, regardless of their major. At the University of Michigan, the College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts (LSA) requires students to take many classes in order to graduate with any degree, including a language requirement, two writing classes, a quantitative reasoning course, and the completion of 30 credits outside of their major for a distribution requirement across various fields. This is in addition to the requirements students must fulfill to graduate within their major. This has become the standard American college model, with students typically taking four years to fulfill all of their requirements and graduate.
This model is not the case everywhere, though. In the United Kingdom, an undergraduate education only takes three years to complete due to the lack of extensive general education requirements, with students taking the vast majority of their courses within their majors (Business Insider). The same is true for much of the rest of Europe (US News).
The United States, too, is one of the few countries that require undergraduate degrees in order to gain admission into medical, law, and other professional schools. Whereas in much of the world, students directly begin medical school when they graduate from high school. In comparison, students in the United States must first obtain an expensive four-year degree on a pre-med, pre-law, or other pre-professional track. In other countries, medical school typically is 6 years, compared to 4 years in America, with students in America spending about 2 extra years in college before being able to become a doctor. The same is true for lawyers who typically must study the social sciences or humanities before being able to study law.
The structure of the American college system leads to significant deadweight loss and negative implications for social welfare. While the system might have its reasons for existing to some degree, I argue that the negative effects far outweigh the positive ones.
Employment, Experience, and Productivity
There is an opportunity cost involved in college education. Every year spent in college is one less year in the workforce being productive. While subtracting just one or two years to any individual career might seem trivial, in aggregate, this is a large productivity loss. Adding a year to education shifts the duration of a career to the left, all things being equal, with that lost year being the one with the most experience. This is illustrated below on the lines representing the lifespans of two different workers, one with a shortened and one with an extended education:
As is clearly seen, an extended education shortens the career of a worker, specifically taking away the most experienced years first. In order for this to be justified, it must be the case that extended education boosts the overall productivity of the worker in his or her career; I will argue that this is not the case in the next section.
For now, take it as given that this extended education does not justify itself in long-term productivity (this will be explained later). What are the potential consequences of this?
First and foremost, there is less overall employment to produce the goods and services needed for society, and the labor force has, on average, less experience in their respective jobs. This has two consequences. First, it raises prices. If there is less labor, which is an input in production, then the supply curve shifts inwards, leading to higher prices. Secondly, the combination of less labor and less labor experience lessens the ability to innovate and specialize, further restricting the aggregate supply curve and leading to higher prices. Think of how the medical industry would be different if there were more doctors who, on average, were more experienced as doctors. Medical bills would experience downward price pressure and there would be overall more access to medical care. The second effect is that it lowers the overall tax base. With one or more years taken off of the career of the average worker, there is less income available for the government to tax and spend on things like education, infrastructure, etc. It is, too, important that this year is cut from the end of one’s career, when people are typically making more than they do at the start of their careers. Overall, this reduces public funds available for public goods.
Specialization
A jack of all trades, master of none: this is what is created by the general education system. Colleges claim that their extensive graduation requirements are designed at creating “well-rounded” graduates with knowledge of many different disciplines. While this sounds great, and I am not against personal enrichment, is this economically efficient? Is this “well-roundedness” worth the great expense of additional time added to a college education? Is it done at the expense of studying one’s major more in-depth?
Personally, less than half of my courses taken at U-M have been in my economics major and related mathematics courses, 41% to be specific. 22% have been in my minor. 37%, nearly as much as my major, have been spent on general education courses not including general math courses. While this is just one anecdote, most college students have had a similar experience.
According to the LSA College Requirements, one must accumulate 120 credits to graduate. I estimated that it would take about 50-60 credits just to fulfill one’s general education requirements (not including any prerequisites or requirements for one’s major). As we can see, this comprises almost half of all the credits required to graduate. It is only through using general education requirements to also fulfill major and minor requirements that one can make efficient use of them.
In his magnum opus The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith outlines his theory of specialization. In it, he posits that people are able to produce more efficiently if they specialize in respective tasks. Rather than having five separate people make a car themselves, they could produce more collectively if they divided the car-making process into five steps and each specialized in just one. The same is true in aggregate. We need workers who are specialized in a specific field in order to produce better quality products both more cheaply and in higher quantity.
Think about it intuitively. Do you care whether your surgeon is well-versed in Shakespeare’s Hamlet or the philosophical works of Immanuel Kant? While this might be nice, when it comes to producing goods and services, we all prefer specialization. Given the choice, I’d rather my surgeon have taken an extra course in medicine as opposed to English literature. We would rather prefer people have a basic knowledge of every discipline for everyday life (grammar, math, etc), but in-depth knowledge in their respective trade. At U-M, engineers have much fewer graduation requirements as compared to their LSA counterparts. Why? Because there is a recognition that the rigor involved in engineering necessitates that students give up reading Hamlet in order to be better versed in mathematics or physics. After all, these are the people responsible for creating the buildings we live in, the software we use, and the utilities we all need to survive. Given the choice, I’d prefer that the civil engineer who built my house be better versed in calculus than 18th-century German poetry.
Colleges market these general education courses as fulfilling the role of creating “well-rounded” citizens. For every general education course required, though, one major-related course is sacrificed; either that or the length of college is extended. While, surely, it would be nice for everyone to be able to appreciate Shakespeare or Kant at the dinner table, is it worth the immense opportunity and monetary cost? The entire K-12 system is already designed to fulfill the purpose of providing citizens with a general education, including mathematics, grammar, social studies, and other disciplines. College comes into play to equip us with specific knowledge to enter a certain industry – not as a continuation of K-12 education. This is why college is not a requirement unless you wish to enter a specialized trade.
Furthermore, many of these college general education classes repeat the same curricula as a standard high school education. In my own experience, my college general education courses have just been repeats of my high school courses. I argue that the extensive general education requirements are, in fact, not worth their opportunity cost. It could be the case that they exist as a means to keep students in school longer to collect more tuition fees.
Much of the argument in the previous section rests upon the assertion that a decrease in career length corresponds to a decrease in average worker experience and labor quality. This, of course, depends. Perhaps one additional year of undergraduate education increases your ability to be productive in your career in such a way that the lost year of employment is “made up for” by the productivity increase caused by the additional year of education. This is true, of course. My argument, though, is that many of these required courses are entirely unrelated to the eventual career of students, and thus the additional time spent on these specific courses does not have a significant effect on productivity and is truly a waste of time and money, from the standpoint of economic efficiency. Does taking 19th-century Russian literature (and paying thousands of dollars to do so) really greatly improve one’s long-term productivity as a doctor? If you think it does, does it do so better than an additional year of experience as a doctor, or perhaps an additional semester studying medicine? An opportunity cost-benefit analysis is overdue.
Affordability & Social Inequality
In recent years, the affordability, or lack thereof, of college has been a hot topic. The cost of a four-year education has skyrocketed over the decades, leaving many prospective students priced out of a degree and many graduates with a great debt burden. Getting rid of these requirements, thus allowing college to be shortened to three years, would make college more affordable and yield great economic benefits.
First and foremost, this would lessen income inequality, including that between various racial and ethnic groups. With college being about 25% cheaper, it follows that it would become affordable to more people. This would increase social mobility and reduce inequalities in opportunities between groups. People who previously lacked access to college would be able to get a degree more easily.
Secondly, this would increase the average productivity and quality of labor. With more people able to pursue an education, our labor force would increase in average skill level. This would increase specialization and productivity, giving a great boost to GDP. It is no secret that mass public education has been a driving force behind the success of many modern economies; hence, why mass education has been a focal point of public policy in much of the world. Reducing general education requirements would further this initiative.
Thirdly, this would increase the wages of low-skilled labor, who may need that raise more than most. As more and more people from the lower rungs of the economic ladder are able to get an education, the labor supply for low-skilled labor jobs would fall, while the demand for this type of labor would likely remain constant. This would increase the equilibrium wage in the labor market for those jobs, helping even those in the lower economic brackets who choose not to receive a college education.
Lastly, the economic burden that the college debt crisis has caused would be lessened. With college graduates being able to graduate with less debt, on average, we would see a rise in consumption as graduates would have more disposable income. Seeing that these graduates, too, have higher average salaries, we should see a further rise in aggregate consumption and thus increased GDP.
A Solution
It is very important to note, though, that I am not advocating for a complete overhaul of any and all graduation requirements. Rather, I think we should simply make large cuts to them and only keep the essentials. By “essential,” I truly mean a conservative application of the term. Perhaps one writing class, one math class, one science class, and one social science or ethnicity-related class should suffice, but nothing like the extensive requirements we have today. In place of many of these requirements, students should take more classes within their major (increasing specialization) or be able to pursue a complementary minor to their studies. General education requirements should be able to be completed, in my opinion, within a semester (4-5 classes).
This should enable one to complete one’s degree in 3 years. Graduation requirements, too, should perhaps be highly personalized to one’s field of study. Some general education classes would be more useful to certain majors than others. A history major would certainly benefit from a general writing class, for example. Perhaps some mathematics or science requirements should be slightly loosened for them in favor of a general education requirement that places more emphasis on related English and Social Studies skills. A physics major, perhaps, would gain more from studying closely-related chemistry than gender theory.
One of the advertised reasons behind these general education requirements has to do with encouraging students to explore their interests. Many students come to college without a strong idea of what they want to study. By requiring students to take classes across many disciplines, the thought is that they would be able to figure out what they are interested in.
The fact is, though, that students can still voluntarily do this without these general education requirements. Many students also come to college with a solid idea of what they would like to study. Why hold these students back for the sake of others? Students who remain undecided may coordinate with their advisors to take classes across different disciplines, lengthening their college tenure should they choose. In this way, students can still explore their interests if needed, and others are not held back (temporarily and financially) in their studies.
Conclusion
While this discussion has been brief, I think it is apparent that extensive graduation requirements are, perhaps, producing a lot of deadweight loss. Elsewhere in the world, these requirements either do not exist or are substantially smaller in scale. I think it is time that policymakers and university officials should re-examine their graduation policies.Overall, graduation requirements should be significantly shortened in such a way that it is more than possible to graduate from college in three years. This would have an immense net-positive impact on the economy, increasing productivity, labor supply and productive capacity, experience, specialization, social mobility, low-skilled wages, and affordability while decreasing inequalities in opportunity and overall debt burdens.
Works Cited
Durrani, Anayat. “How Bachelor’s Degrees in the U.S. and Europe Differ …” US News, US News, 2020, https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/articles/how-bachelors-degrees-in-the-us-and-europe-differ.
Kopaczewski, Christine. “6 Ways College Is Different in the US and the UK.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 12 June 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/how-college-is-different-in-the-us-and-the-uk-2018-6#2-the-three-year-degree-2.
“LSA Requirements: U-M LSA U-M College of LSA.” University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/academics/lsa-requirements.html.