The letter to the right was posted on the AAUP listserv. I do not know the gender of this student but the tone rings very true.
A relative of mine, a very well educated man, actually left his university as a sophomore. This relative, a he I will call Bjorn, ended up in tech because Bjorn is very bright and was offered a job after his sophomore year. Bjorn left his university (not the UW) not because of the tech courses .. he was obviously well along .. but because he found the humanities and social sciences worthless. Large classes and low standards made these course too easy for him. All this worked out because Bjorn is a driven student. He is now one of the best educated folks I know .. a man self educated in the humanities and social studies. This education qualities Bjorn for his management job and, maybe more importantly, for a full personal life.
The question raised by this letter on the AAUP list is really not about Bjorn. It is about other kids who come to the UW for an education. In a school where, by state mandate, 1/3 of our enrollment is by transfer from community colleges, what is the role of general education? Can a kid without Bjorn’s drive get a general education at the UW or is the UW just a job factory?
“When I first came to the University, I had some utopian idea of higher education. A place where I come to philosophize, bathe in art, study mathematic theory, and lose myself in library aisles, somehow managing to read every book on the shelves. Of course, all of this would be done in some room reminiscent of the Suzzallo reading room, with some brass finished globe sitting in front of my stacks of studies. The reality of the University of Washington came quickly. To compete, I needed to drop my notions of well rounding education and focus on the thing that would maximize my return on investment. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Over the course of my undergrad of career I had wonderful flashes of a rounding education. Yet with an increasingly stressful course load, I would always attempt to acquire the easiest general credit. I shied away from rounding out a course load with diverse topics which peaked my interest to take classes which I thought would require the least amount of work. Decisions sparked by the fear that too difficult a class outside of my major would detract detrimentally from my major’s studies. All reinforced by the pace and competitive nature of the university…”