Pare required classes

I was listening to President Obama’s State of the Union speech. He suggested that students should have two years of free college to learn a trade.

College would be cheaper if unnecessary classes were not required. For instance, offer tests to opt out of some required courses. If a person can pass a history test, let him opt out and get a pass credit for it. The same would go with freshman English and maybe political science. I helped two students recently write papers for freshmen English. The content they had to include in their papers would only be useful if they wanted to be creative writers.

That would be less time students would have to spend in school and we could cut down the overhead at the colleges because less staff would be needed. When I was in college many years ago, I had to take courses that I never used. Examples were philosophy and sociology. For me, it was a waste of time.

Patricia McManus

Spokane Valley