Caryn Littler, freshman journalism major at Ithaca College, talks about the effects of the Park school’s loose general education requirements.

“Personally, I like it. But it’s probably not going to be good for me because I won’t have a wide variety of background information that I might need for my job,” Littler says. “In my job, hopefully as a news producer, I’ll probably need to know about a wide variety of things—economics, politics—and while I got some of that in high school, I might not remember it ten years down the line.”

The administration of the Park school seems to be thinking like its students. Starting next fall, all incoming freshmen will have general education requirements.

Chair of the Park School Curriculum Committee, Dr. Raymond Gozzi, Jr., elaborates on the upcoming changes.

“We’re still working out what the requirements will be,” he says. “We want to set up a school-wide program where every student must complete courses in the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and fine arts.”

Gozzi says students will most likely have to take four to six required courses.

“We certainly have fewer requirements than other schools, so if [students] don’t like them, it should still be okay,” he says.

With most universities requiring some sort of core curriculum, and those schools that currently do not considering it for the future, it looks like ‘gen. eds.’ are here to stay. Although these general education requirements may occupy a good portion of a student’s schedule, it is rare that such classes will influence a student’s decision to attend a particular school.

“Honestly all the schools I applied to had ‘gen. eds.’, so it didn’t go into my decision about where to go to school,” Spengler says. “When I got into Notre Dame, the school’s reputation influenced my decision more than its ‘gen. ed.’ requirements.”