As students return to campus for a new spring semester, most of us will drain our bank accounts for tuition, books and special calculators. Rather than smiling and accepting all of this as the cost of a quality education, we ought to examine whether our education is delivering the best possible value for our money.

The answer, unfortunately, is no.

I am not contending that a degree from OU is not worth the total tuition. If I believed that, I would have dropped out by now. Rather, my contention is that a significant portion of the average student’s tuition, time and mental energy is wasted each semester on frivolous, academic pursuits.

The reason for all of this waste is the outdated liberal arts model and, of course, its backbone the core curriculum.

The core curriculum is an inefficient model of education that keeps students in universities much longer than is necessary. It is absurd and childish to force adults who have chosen to major in economics to study cell structures, just as it is absurd to force biology majors to understand the Keynesian national income model.

The rationale behind the liberal arts model of education is that “the whole individual” should be educated. This of course is simply an impossible goal, for there are endless academic pursuits necessary to educate “the whole individual,” from ethics to ballet to ancient French.

The core curriculum, aside from forcing us into several classes we simply do not care about, also makes classes less valuable for those who are genuinely interested in the topics discussed. One only needs to peek at the masses of freshman texting and doodling during their introductory lecture halls to see that this is true.

The core curriculum leads to larger-than-ideal class sizes, which has a tendency to ruin students’ ability to develop meaningful rapport with professors in their field of interest. In this way, the core curriculum also hurts professors’ experience in the classroom. Because every professor I’ve ever met prefers a classroom full of questions and challenges to one full of blank stares and distracted minds.

The reason this model still exists is an entire college degree is still worth the entire cost of tuition to students. We’ve all heard the numbers about lifetime earnings for those with degrees rather than only high school diplomas, and that’s why most of us are here.

However, it would be much more cost-effective to shave off the useless requirements of our liberal arts degrees and only require students to take those classes which are relevant to our chosen major or majors.

For many students, such as my fellow economics majors, this would shave as many as two full years off the time necessary to complete our degrees. This creates two additional years to pursue internships, travel or gain real work experience while we’re still relatively young.

For others, such as Petroleum Engineers, abolition would probably not save them an extra year in college, but would allow them to focus more heavily on their career-oriented studies.

One effect of the core curriculum many people ignore is it can actually prevent students from truly delving into a second or third subject. Because we are required to meet so many different requirements, students may find they do not have time to pursue a minor or a second major.

Even if the core curriculum were abolished, there would still be students who choose to pursue minors and dabble in other subjects. Some would even choose a liberal arts education, pursuing many tracks.

To these students, additional classes are worth their tuition. Many of us, however, would choose to explore other topics in our free time (as most of us already do) and focus our time at the university toward our future careers.

Abolishing the core curriculum forever would allow students to earn their degrees in less time. It also would allow them to customize their education to their own goals and desires rather than requiring them to satisfy some administrator’s definition of “well-rounded.”