I live in Australia where if you study a particular degree, all (or the vast majority) of your subjects are directly related to that field.
I may be wrong but movies tend to give me the impression that at American universities/colleges, all students study a wide array of subjects, attend random lectures, and students room with people studying different things.
It also appears to be a lot about the lifestyle and not just get in, do your study, get your degree.
Are American studies specialised or more general?
Thank you! 🫶
In: 84
In the US: A typical 4-year Bachelor degree is 120 credits worth of classes, of which about 40 of them are “General Education” requirements for all students and the rest are part of that specific student’s “Major” or “Minor” degree requirements.
General Education is a lot of stuff selected from a wide list of things that it would be nice for everyone to know – basic history, a foreign language, some literature, etc. Even though they are requirements for everyone there is still some amount of choice within them. (For example, You must take two semesters of a foreign language, but you get to pick which language, or you must take two semesters of literature, but you get to pick which genre of literature.)
A “Major” is your chosen thing you’re specifically getting a degree for. The rest of those 120 credits beyond the required 40 general education credits will be things in your major, usually.
A “Minor” is a lesser sort of “half major” you can supplement your major with if you like. Often you get them when you realize there’s another course of study that overlaps with your major so you may as well get a certificate that says you did that work. (For example, lets say you go for a degree in physics. Well, you’re probably also going to have to take a lot of mathematics classes to do that, so you might as well also get a math minor while you’re at it.)
The first year of college is typically where you do more general education stuff than major stuff. Partly because those are lower level classes, but also because this leaves the final decision about your major flexible to change later. No matter what you picked for major you’d still need that 2 semesters of foreign language, a couple of semesters of history, etc, so if you start with that stuff you haven’t locked yourself in to one major yet.
There’s also a lot of overlap in the lower level courses where some people are in class because it’s their major while other people are there because it’s just general education for them. The same basic world geography course that a Geography Major would be doing in year 1 might be something a Physics major might do in a later year just to finish out a general education requirement.
And for reference, a “credit” is a measurement that typically measures the scheduled time commitment for the class (not including the time in between where you study or do homework, just the time on the schedule). One credit means one hour scheduled per week for one semester. (So a class that has hour lectures on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a semester meets for 3 hours a week so it would be a 3 credit class. A class that has one hour lectures Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but also also has a 2 hour scheduled science lab session on Thursdays would be a 5 credit class. (3 lecture hours plus 2 lab hours per week.)
Note, all the above stuff about “General Education” only applies to a 4-year degree. If you go beyond that and start getting into further degrees, like a Masters or a Doctorate, then you are pretty much done with General Education and are JUST doing things in your specialty.
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