General education requirements have proven to be an advantage for some students, despite rising tuition costs and a growing need to graduate early.

The Council of Undergraduate Education is in charge of reviewing new courses to be approved for the general education list every week.

The council will be assembling to review a German language course on Friday Jan. 27th to determine whether it will remain on the list. Two new courses–Masterpieces of Classical Literature and Gender, Ethnicity, and Identity in the Ancient World–will also be examined as potential additions to the list.

Catherine Freeman, the academic standards coordinator, facilitates the approval process for these courses. Freeman facilitates the approval through both the Council of Undergraduate Education, and two of the Provost standing committees, as well as the Courses and Curricula Committee.

“A new course has to meet the objectives for the general education category that it is requesting placement on, and those were developed by the Council of Undergraduate Education,” Freeman said.

General education courses offer some undecided students the ability to find their interests; however, students who enter the university with a graduation plan might also be annoyed by having to take these unrelated and expensive courses.

Over the next five years, the cost of tuition is expected to be raised by $1,500. This means students will be required to pay even more for these classes that often have little to do with their major.

“This is a university; it’s not a technical school. We’re training people to be broadly educated, in thinking, interacting with everybody,” John Ambrose, dean of the undergraduate academic program, said. “The mathematicians can speak with philosophers; the philosophers can speak to the agriculturists.”

The latest revision of the general education program has it reduced to only 39 hours now, according to Freeman.

“I think general education requirements are a good thing, just for the simple fact that you can’t specialize in one thing and not know anything about anything else,” Caroline Higgins, a freshman in business administration with a marketing concentration, said.

Most students utilize the process of having a course double-count, so as to save money and credit hours.

“If you’re in math or science, all the science courses, all the math courses that you take as part of your major, in most cases, will count toward general education,” Ambrose said. “The courses on the other side of campus, so to speak, the humanities and social sciences, will have the same arrangement.”

The number of extra courses required for students are usually between 20 to 25 credit hours, Ambrose added.

Mahogany Woods, a senior in international studies, often questioned their relevancy.

“I don’t always enjoy [general education courses] because some of them I’m not interested in, such as chemistry; I hate periodic tables and things like that,” Woods said. “I don’t think I’ll ever use it in my major. Some make you well-rounded and some are just a waste of time.”

The additional breadth category, however, cannot be used to double count a course; it forces engineering students to actually take that humanities course, Freeman said.

“I don’t mind that I have to do that. I’m happy with the fact that I have to take other classes that aren’t in my intended major because I like learning about new things,” Higgins said.

According to Ambrose, close looks at employer surveys indicated that N.C . State students are preferred over others in the research triangle.

“65 percent of the employers, they were saying N.C . State is the first choice for hiring students. Not Duke, not Wake Forest, not Chapel Hill, but N.C . State,” Ambrose said. “They want a student that has a disciplinary background, but they also want a student that’s broadly educated, so general education actually improves your job prospects.”

All of the Council of Undergraduate Education meetings are open for students to attend.

Friday’s meeting will take place in Park Shops, Room 200.