Colleges Clamp Down on Bloated Student Schedules – WSJ

My comment: (See the link to the article below.)

I doubt that this was a problem when students had to study to get a decent grade; and, more to the point, had to take required courses that gave them a general background.

In 1963, when I was a freshman at Carnegie-Mellon, I had to take a year of history, English, calculus, physics and chemistry. The next year I had to take a year of foreign lang., physics and math; and a semester of economics and psychology.

I looked at UCLA’s catalogue from the same time period. Again, in a more complicated way, students had to take a lot of required courses.

I doubt that many students of the 60’s wanted to take on many extra courses. Extra courses meant extra learning, which means extra work, real work.

(Today, students who take a full load study about 12-13 hours a week, vs. 25 in the sixties, and increase their critical thinking scores .07 sigma, vs. 1 sigma in the sixties.)

via Colleges Clamp Down on Bloated Student Schedules – WSJ.