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I hope to graduate next December, and when I went in to my advisor’s office to figure out how to make that happen I realized I still had two-and-a-half co-curricular credits to take. So next semester, I’m taking beginning tennis, beginning badminton and intermediate tennis.
Now tennis and badminton are fun, but are they really as important as engineering classes? Should we really be required to take them?
Increasingly, people and universities are saying no. In the 1920’s, 97 percent of universities in the US had physical education requirements according to a study in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. Today, that’s down to 39 percent, and even lower among public universities. At the same time, high schools and middle schools across the country are cutting their gym programs.
America already has an obesity problem. The Center for Disease Control reports that more than a third of US adults are obese, which leads to a variety of negative health outcomes. Is physical education something that we want to cut back on?
There’s a difference between working out and physical education. Physical education is about building habits that can last for a lifetime. College is an important formative time for people, and the lifestyles we come away with are a consequence of more than our majors. Is this the responsibility of higher education?
There are a number ways to think of universities, and how you look at paying for gym credits depends a lot on what context you subscribe to. Some see the university as a degree-granting institution. In this transactional model, the university has a product, the degree that we as students are interested in.
Anything external to that is fluff, and I don’t want to pay for it. On the other hand, you can also look at universities as an important part of civil society. The university in this model is designed to create good citizens, and from that perspective a well-rounded mental and physical education is important. For now, Tech requires me to take them, and I don’t mind. But it’s important thing to think about. What exactly are you paying for?
