Exasperated with the Education System!!!

Basically it all started when NTU changed the General Education Requirement (GER)… As an engineering student, I must fulfil the following:

15 AUs of Prescribed Electives (GER-PE) comprising
- Art, Humanities & Social Sciences (AHSS) 9 AU
- Science, Technology & Society (STS) 3 AU
- Business & Management (BM) 3 AU

9 AUs of Unrestricted Electives (GER-UE)

Definitions:

GER-PE = Prescribed electives in GER curriculum, which are categorised into 3 sub-areas of studies comprising Art, Humanities & Social Sciences (AHSS); Science, Technology & Society (STS); and Business & Management (BM).

And AU = Academic Units (the no. of hours of class that module comprises of)

UE = unrestricted electives which means you can take any module outside your own faculty and it would count towards this.

Now the issue comes in with the BM modules… See I am taking a Business Minor, which means I take 5 modules of 3 Aus each, amounting to 15 Aus in total. This 15 AU will also cover my 9 AUs of GER-UE, which by right should leave me with 6 Aus of extra business module units. Till this date, I have finished 12 AUs of my Business Minor modules… Follow so far?

Ok then I look at the GER-PE requirements and find that I must do 3 AUs of a BM category module.. ok no problem… so I look at the list of BM modules offered and notice that the following 5 are cross-listed with Business Minor… of these 5, I have already done the first 3 (and scored pretty well at that as well)

- MB101 Accounting : Cross-listed with Biz Minor
- MB102 Business Finance : Cross-listed with Biz Minor
- MB103 Principles of Marketing : Cross-listed with Biz Minor
- MB361 Operations & Quality Management in Manufacturing and Services Industries : Cross-listed with Biz Minor
- MB363 Management Decision Tools : Cross-listed with Biz Minor

So I thought to myself, "In this case, my business minor modules should count towards my BM requirements.. after all it won't make sense that I take more modules than others to do a minor in business and still need to do another module in business.. especially when my minor modules are mentioned in that list"

But I figured I better make sure so I sent the following email:

-----Original Message-----
From: #TAN XIN NI SHARON#
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 11:56 AM
To: Khong Meng Chee, Elaine
Subject: Question about GE-PE requirements

Dear Mdm,

I was looking at the list of subjects under the Business Management Pescribed Electives and noticed that some of the courses listed inside are cross-linked with the Business Minor. Does this mean that if I have taken those modules to clear my business minor, I do not need to take any more PE from that category?

Sharon

And this is the reply I got today:

From: Khong Meng Chee, Elaine
Sent: Thu 26/05/2005 3:36 PM
To: #TAN XIN NI SHARON#
Subject: RE: Question about GE-PE requirements

Hi Sharon

The subjects that you read for the Business Minor or any Minor are used to off set against General Elective requirements (the new term for this General Education Requirement – Unrestricted Electives ).

However, you would still need to read Prescribed Electives from the Business Management category as they are under the General Education Requirement – Prescribed Electives.

Should you need further clarification, fill free to contact me.

Regards,
Elaine Khong

Can someone explain to me the logic behind this??????? Just because of some crummy requirement in the book, everything has to happen that way? Come on, my Business Minor should be more than enough to teach me about Business and Management... Doesn't make sense that I should spend another 3 hours of my time on business stuff when I can use it to take another more interesting or useful General Elective!!!

And if they wanna argue in terms of AUs, hey mine seems feasible. I have done so far
- 12 AUs of Business Minor
- minus 9 AUs of GER – UE
- Equals 6 AUs of modules which are in BM category also
- Minus 3 AUs of GER – PE (BM) as required
- Equals an extra of another 3 AUs
- Plus the 2 AUs I did for GER – UE in Year 1
- Equals 5 AUs extra than what is required!!!
- And this is excluding the remaining 3 AUs of Business Minor I have left!!!

After I have calmed down, I shall draft and send an email to the Dean or Vice-Dean or someone high up... and if that doesn't work, I shall consider putting together a petition... I'm sure many engineering students do business minor also...

Man… Talk about manifestation of the No U-Turn Syndrome (NUTS)