I'm pretty sure that post-secondary schools can produce as technically competent engineers in two or three years without humanities and social sciences and with fewer courses in basic sciences as they do now in five years. That will be probably efficient, as far as economic production is concerned. Post-secondary schools focused on technical education alone, however, should not be called colleges and universities; they ought to be called vocational schools, in the spirit of truth in advertising. Some radical neoliberals might love to do get rid of all humanities (except composition) and much of social sciences (except perhaps economics, criminology, and the like) at all _non-elite_ colleges and universities, as they do not produce any products easily converted into mass-production goods and services. Students (as well as their parents) who think of themselves as consumers of educational services whose end products are grades and degrees, not critical knowledge, may also support the abolition of general education requirements, though they would probably resist the renaming that I would demand in the event of abolition, as "vocational schools" do not sound as prestigious as "colleges" and "universities." Conservatives of secretly (rather than brazenly) elitist sorts, too, would like to return us to the days when working-class kids were confined to technical education (if they got any higher education at all), entirely cheated out of liberal education reserved for the power elite, perhaps by using the populist rhetoric of going "back to the basics" and serving the needs and desires of ordinary Americans as cheaply as possible (ordinary Americans, they presume, do not or should not take interest in history, literature, philosophy, etc.).
Cheapen your education, and you'll cheapen the value of your labor power, however -- that's what the bearded curmudgeonly Old Man would say. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>