Anyone who ever bothered to read any publications from the Office of Registration and Records knows Elizabethtown College requires 125 credits to graduate. However, the number of credits required to complete a major varies greatly depending on area of study. A conversation which I often have with other students revolves around this concept.
As an international business and German double-major, I haven’t had much wiggle room in my schedule. Almost all of my core classes were pre-determined since they fulfill major requirements as well, and I have taken my first free elective of college just this fall semester of my senior year. Together, my majors require 115 credit hours, a 125-hour internship and a year of study abroad. My one quad mate’s major, however, only requires 44 credits.
That being said, I cannot say that I feel that’s unfair. International business is a very structured major, and it is meant to set its students on a structured career path. As such, it seems only appropriate that it requires students to acquire a particular set of skills in order to work in the field. Liberal arts majors are meant to encourage creativity and expression. As such, it is only appropriate that students of that major be given some freedom in their schedules.
No matter what your major, you still need 125 credits to graduate. It doesn’t matter if, as was my case, you are given a piece of paper your first week on campus that outlines each class you will take each semester all four years or if you are free to take two electives each semester and major classes as you see fit. If you are bothered by the fact your major has more required credits than others to the point where you consider switching, you should. The amount of required credits is not necessarily a reflection of the difficulty of a major, nor is it necessarily a reflection of the structure of that major.
For example, the schedule for a math major requires many classes that are prerequisites of others. That is to say, although the major requires fewer credits than others, the building-block nature of the subject matter makes it impossible to take too many major classes. For example, you can’t realistically expect someone to take both Calculus I and II in the same semester.
The simple truth of the situation is that some majors require a larger knowledge pool than others. That is, while a math major needs to focus on math skills, an international business major needs to learn not only basic accounting, finance and management, but also economics, language studies and international relations. Although there may be more areas which such a student has to study, the depth of study cannot be compared to, in using the same example, the depth in which a math major learns calculus. This all supports the basic argument that the more focused a major is, the more ladder-like their course structure will be, and therefore may require less credits within the major.
A more illustrative example of this situation may be the physics major. As of this registration year, this major requires 63 credits. Although that is more than some other majors, it is 26 percent less (22 credits less) than the international business major. However, I don’t think it can be said that physics is therefore only 74 percent as difficult as International Business.
In end effect, it is best to trust the designers of the major requirements and believe that their intentions are to educate their students in the most appropriate manner in order to secure a place in the workforce for them, and not simply to add classes to the major to fluff up numbers. I would rather see a major require only 30 credits, but have an outstanding reputation, than see that same major ask students to fulfill 90 credit-hours where two thirds of them are a waste of the students’ time.
If you love your major, which I hope you do, you shouldn’t give any thought to the number of credits required besides planning out how you are going to complete them. Think, for example, about the figures which most students sweat. The bottom line of their financial aid package, their GPA and their Jay Bucks balance are some numbers that might be on the minds of students. However, I have yet to run into a student who feels that the number of credit-hours required by their major is important to employers or to their future (outside of accounting majors hoping to sit for the CPA exam). This figure is often brought in as evidence during pissing contests comparing the academic rigor of majors among roommates and friends, but in truth, it has nothing to do with the matter.
