> The Greeks figured this out
the Greeks didn't have Psych 101 classes with 2000 students
the Greeks didn't have Psych 101 classes with 2000 students
https://chem.wisc.edu/chemistry-building-project-overview/
> Chemistry, as the central science, is relevant to many other disciplines and is therefore part of the core curriculum of numerous degree programs on campus. By the time they graduate, 55 percent of undergraduates have taken a chemistry class at UW-Madison. As enrollment grew over the years, department and campus leaders noticed that students were often not able to schedule needed courses. This meant it took them longer to earn a degree.
There are about 10,000 under grads for each year at UW Madison. Chem 103 gets about 5000 students per year.
While that roughly matches the Psych 101 with 2000... this shows that "here's a real number."
Q1: Are there thousands of employers out there demanding students who have passed Psych 101 with flying colours?
Q2: If not, why not try to stop this?
I think alternatively we need employers to stop asking for degree’s altogether so the enrollees are people who are there to learn for themselves not for employers. It’d reduce the crazy demand and cost around education.
(Full disclosure: I don't understand the US college system at all [sorry!])
In what circumstances would a student be already at college and wanting/needing to "survey" psychology by doing Psych 101?
More broadly, who wants to major in psychology .. and why? Do employers need more professional psychologists?
2. “Survey” courses have 2 values through helping people learn new topics (1) gain broad understanding of the world, and (2) discover fields they may wish to major or study deeper in if they haven’t decided yet.
My caveat here is that I suspect (unsubstantiated) that some topics become filler by universities.
3. There are lots of jobs people do with a psychology major, besides a psychologist/researcher, but I don’t know how many of them require that deep knowledge explicitly.
Many jobs are probably better performed if you learn some psychology (eg a few classes worth) - marketing, non-therapeutic counseling (coaches, teaching, etc), HR, recruiting, doctors, nurses, organizational management, etc.
I want to reiterate point 1 - there’s value in education beyond employment, but it’s plausible that employers should care less. I doubt most employers expect candidates to take survey level courses, but requiring a degree of any sort implicitly assumes they have taken those courses.
OK, so what proportion of college students choose their classes for those reasons?
Thinking back to my time at college, there wasn't a whole lot of purely intellectual motivation (or genuine curiosity) going around.
The overwhelming majority were there a) to have a good time, and/or b) because they saw it as a route to a well-paying job once it was completed.
People want to learn, but what they really want is a degree. No one is going to go two more years into debt for pedagogical purity