3 at UW. My degree required 147 credits. Half of them were useful.
The other half were to keep liberal arts professors on the payroll.
147?!? Lordy.
It looks like they're reduced the humanities stuff to one semester of course load. I don't mind the idea of forcing engineers to have a little breadth, just for personality, but obviously there's a price tag, which is an issue.
The interesting thing is of course the liberal arts profs are probably making the lion's share of the tuition money, purely from a credit side. Far less so for research.
Another interesting side point is that undergrad programs with high-end professional ties do their best to eject 18-year-old dummies with great force. I did a little pre-med science, got into business school and avoided the weed-out engineering math I tested out of it precisely because it was a tool to beat those kids around the head. So I got a taste of all those. I understand the rationale, because you want really good kids doing it, but you also throw back those kids into recirculation, not so likely to leave the school, but instead just finish out a more amorphous degree.
Perhaps the longer lead-up was a benefit, as being a 22-year-old Badge working through stuff created a different perspective than a 18-year-old one.
It also reminds me of a line from someone I met in the military. She said the military excels at finding a use for someone and don't give up easy. When the academy can't use an 18-year-old or 19-year-old for a specific thing, it recirculates them to all those degrees Badge dislikes. The schools lack the breadth of middle ground those AS degrees have.
(I'm also reminded that Georgia Tech is Badge's ideal school. That makes me chuckle)
