Students haven’t been completing college in four years—that’s a bad thing. And since we can’t rely on Congress to make meaningful fixes—like when the House’s attempt to raise Pell Grant eligibility from 12 to 15 credits per semester fell by the wayside—reformers need to look elsewhere. That elsewhere is making cuts to the bloated core curriculum. Not all of it, of course—sadly, colleges still have to remediate what K–12 fails to teach—but much of the excess could and should be cut.
Few issues in higher ed get less attention than the growing time it takes students to earn a degree. The average time to complete a bachelor’s degree in the U.S. is now five to six years. That’s insane. The longer students stay in school, the more it costs taxpayers, delays workforce entry, and increases reliance on aid. As Jaison Abel and Richard Deitz of the New York Fed note, the clearest cost is tuition—about $6,500 a year after aid—but the bigger loss is time. These students could be working. Instead, they’re stuck in class.
One reason for the delay? Degree requirements are bloated. A standard bachelor’s degree requires about 120 credit hours, but at least 25 percent of those are unrelated to the degree itself, and probably 10 percent are completely useless.
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At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, for example, students must complete 11 general education courses—nearly as many as some majors require. A core curriculum is supposed to enrich culture, cultivate character, and expose students to a broad base of knowledge. But categories like “Social & Cultural Diversity” often translate to semesters spent in courses unmoored from academic rigor and laden with ideological messaging, which not only keeps students in college longer but also delays maturity. Glenn Ricketts, a political science professor at Raritan Valley Community College and Public Affairs Director at the National Association of Scholars, says his students “often behave like middle schoolers—who endlessly defer making adult decisions about their lives.”
Some core classes offer real value. But requiring every liberal arts student to take multiple math and science courses—or STEM majors to slog through multiple English courses and diversity studies—is a waste. They don’t retain the material anyway. I had to take a geology class to meet my core requirements, and I can’t tell you a damn thing about a rock.
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https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2025/07/17/cut-the-bloat-graduate-faster/
A Stanford Computer Science degree requires 180 units to graduate. However, only 58 of these units—less than a third—consist of actual computer science coursework. The mathematics major is a similar story, requiring just 57 units of mathematics coursework. Strip away the peripheral requirements, and a dedicated student could complete their degree in just three or four quarters.
The remaining two-thirds of a Stanford degree—and the additional three years it demands—consists almost entirely of largely unrelated, mandatory diversions like physics and faux-ethics. As we confront mounting student debt and growing skepticism about the value of a college degree, it's high time to assess whether our current system serves students' best interests.
The reason why lies within the labyrinth of additional requirements Stanford has constructed under the guise of a "liberal arts education." Take the mandatory COLLEGE program for freshmen, for instance—two-quarters of discussion-based courses, where it's an open secret that virtually nobody completes the readings, and assignments are graded on completion only. Without any reason to engage meaningfully with the content, COLLEGE just becomes a useless 6-unit obstacle for already overwhelmed freshmen.
......
This stark contrast becomes even more evident when we look abroad. In places like my home country of New Zealand and other comparable nations like the United Kingdom or Australia, undergraduate education is more streamlined. Students complete courses largely within their chosen fields with maybe a handful of electives, resulting in shorter degrees with deeper specialization. These programs accomplish in three years what Stanford and other American universities extend to four, arguably without any loss in competency.
This critique isn't inherently a dismissal of the liberal arts education itself. There is value in exposing students to a variety of disciplines and making them well-educated scholars rather than vocational experts. But the issue lies in the complete imbalance, where two-thirds or more of our degrees consist of unrelated courses and come at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. We’ve strayed from the equilibrium for which a true liberal arts education should strive.
https://stanfordreview.org/majoring-in-time-wasting-the-hidden-cost-of-academic-bloat/
Few issues in higher ed get less attention than the growing time it takes students to earn a degree. The average time to complete a bachelor’s degree in the U.S. is now five to six years. That’s insane. The longer students stay in school, the more it costs taxpayers, delays workforce entry, and increases reliance on aid. As Jaison Abel and Richard Deitz of the New York Fed note, the clearest cost is tuition—about $6,500 a year after aid—but the bigger loss is time. These students could be working. Instead, they’re stuck in class.
One reason for the delay? Degree requirements are bloated. A standard bachelor’s degree requires about 120 credit hours, but at least 25 percent of those are unrelated to the degree itself, and probably 10 percent are completely useless.
............................................
At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, for example, students must complete 11 general education courses—nearly as many as some majors require. A core curriculum is supposed to enrich culture, cultivate character, and expose students to a broad base of knowledge. But categories like “Social & Cultural Diversity” often translate to semesters spent in courses unmoored from academic rigor and laden with ideological messaging, which not only keeps students in college longer but also delays maturity. Glenn Ricketts, a political science professor at Raritan Valley Community College and Public Affairs Director at the National Association of Scholars, says his students “often behave like middle schoolers—who endlessly defer making adult decisions about their lives.”
Some core classes offer real value. But requiring every liberal arts student to take multiple math and science courses—or STEM majors to slog through multiple English courses and diversity studies—is a waste. They don’t retain the material anyway. I had to take a geology class to meet my core requirements, and I can’t tell you a damn thing about a rock.
.............
https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2025/07/17/cut-the-bloat-graduate-faster/
A Stanford Computer Science degree requires 180 units to graduate. However, only 58 of these units—less than a third—consist of actual computer science coursework. The mathematics major is a similar story, requiring just 57 units of mathematics coursework. Strip away the peripheral requirements, and a dedicated student could complete their degree in just three or four quarters.
The remaining two-thirds of a Stanford degree—and the additional three years it demands—consists almost entirely of largely unrelated, mandatory diversions like physics and faux-ethics. As we confront mounting student debt and growing skepticism about the value of a college degree, it's high time to assess whether our current system serves students' best interests.
The reason why lies within the labyrinth of additional requirements Stanford has constructed under the guise of a "liberal arts education." Take the mandatory COLLEGE program for freshmen, for instance—two-quarters of discussion-based courses, where it's an open secret that virtually nobody completes the readings, and assignments are graded on completion only. Without any reason to engage meaningfully with the content, COLLEGE just becomes a useless 6-unit obstacle for already overwhelmed freshmen.
......
This stark contrast becomes even more evident when we look abroad. In places like my home country of New Zealand and other comparable nations like the United Kingdom or Australia, undergraduate education is more streamlined. Students complete courses largely within their chosen fields with maybe a handful of electives, resulting in shorter degrees with deeper specialization. These programs accomplish in three years what Stanford and other American universities extend to four, arguably without any loss in competency.
This critique isn't inherently a dismissal of the liberal arts education itself. There is value in exposing students to a variety of disciplines and making them well-educated scholars rather than vocational experts. But the issue lies in the complete imbalance, where two-thirds or more of our degrees consist of unrelated courses and come at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. We’ve strayed from the equilibrium for which a true liberal arts education should strive.
https://stanfordreview.org/majoring-in-time-wasting-the-hidden-cost-of-academic-bloat/
