We come to college in search of one thing: knowledge in our chosen program of study. Getting a college degree is supposed to help us easily find an entry-level job after graduation. Eagerly, we follow our designated four-year plans to a tee, in the hope of achieving the most out of our education.

There is a flaw in this system. In reality, students are being cheated out of valuable course hours by taking classes that will never be of much use in their future careers. These precious hours are wasted on what are known as general education requirements.

From the start of our first semester, general education classes fill the credit count towards our graduation. These courses are supposed to turn young, fresh college students into well-rounded adults. Each college at Iowa State requires a certain number of credit hours in the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences and mathematics.

Each of those categories carries valuable knowledge to offer the students attending Iowa State, but students are required to take a ridiculous amount of these filler classes before graduation.

As a journalism major in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, I am obligated to take: 10 humanities credits, eight natural science credits, nine social science credits and three mathematics credits in statistics. It is not the courses that are bothersome; it is the amount of credits needed in each subject.

This past semester, I decided to take an entry-level astronomy class to satisfy three of my eight required natural science credits. Granted, I did learn a lot, but most of the time I kept asking myself why I needed to take a science course and how am I ever going to use this in my professional career. Honestly, I will likely never use the information I learned that semester.

Now, I am stressing over what science credits I should enroll in to complete the natural science requirement. Like many students in my situation, this subject is not a strength, so it is difficult to find courses that will fill the requirement yet allow me to succeed.

Students from every program of study are dealing with what they feel is a burdensome amount of general education requirements.

Marco Del Rosario Rivera, a freshman in pre-architecture, was required to take ECON 101. When asked how he felt about taking the course, he stated, “I won’t use any of the stuff taught in ECON 101 in my future career, but I had to take it.”

Those three credit hours could have been used toward a class that could have gotten Rivera one step closer to his final career goal.

In the College of Engineering, there is not as strong of a focus on the humanities and social sciences, but students are still required to take a variety of math and science classes.

Natalie Hanson, a sophomore in bio-systems engineering, explained that they only have a general education requirement of 15 credits, unlike the 32 credits most LAS students have to take. “We don’t have as many general education classes as liberal arts students do, but sometimes the basic classes, like science, seem redundant.”

By taking a large amount of courses that are either unneeded or redundant, students are losing out on opportunities to improve themselves in their path of study. Whether students search for an internship or that first job, employers only worry about one thing: How well can you perform the tasks assigned to you?

It won’t matter that you took organic chemistry as a political science major or that you can recite the life cycle of a high mass star. Now, colleges should not get rid of general education requirements completely, but lessening the amount would be a good start. In doing so, students are able to take the maximum amount of courses in their actual field. As a result, we will have gained an exceptional amount of knowledge that will allow us to have all of the marketable skills needed in today’s job market.

College should be the training facility for the future of our local, national and global economy. If our colleges want to produce the best and the brightest in their field, there should be more of a focus on the courses that will be applicable in our professional career, not the courses that have nothing to do with our future careers.