School

When first thinking about applying to college none of the questions or answers have been formed yet. I had no clue what i wanted to do until senior year in high school, and i was still not right. The college education system is wrong in having such specific courses and degrees. Of course there are those 50 or so percent that go undecided until they end up with a useless degree where they really learned nothing towards any type of career. For those that know they want to do something more, or that they may want to follow in a number of careers that take up 4 years of college study alone, it is a lot more difficult.
I have been wasting the last 4 years doing architecture. Not wasting because i am not interested in it at all, but recently I decided that i want to do more than just architecture. Also for engineering it is extremely difficult for someone in their fourth year to drop because anything else would just take so much longer. Being an out of state student that also means a lot more expensive. I think that the system could and should change. I want to do engineering now, that is how i think and i realized i would probably be able to do that a lot better than architecture. My problem is that i am not going to do engineering. I have spent so much time doing architecture, and a switch to engineering would put me right back to a first year student having 4 more years ahead of me.
I think that is where the problem lies. The inability to switch majors. This is not the problem for everyone. Not saying that it is easy, but the majority of business type majors have a similar class schedule and can make that leap from Finance to Accounting. With things like architecture and engineering, there is no way that you could because they have specific courses to take each semester. I think the change would happen there, even if making them 5 year programs. The first two years of study should be a better overall general education and minor study. There can be schools, such as languages, arts, math and sciences, but going one route should not hinder your possibility of switching later on. Then i think that third year is experimental, maybe the first semester you try engineering, a good overview of the major, simple generic studies that get you interested or turn you off. The fourth and fifth years should then get you into a deep study of the major itself. By this time i feel that the majority of people would have a good idea of what to do.
This may seem like it would affect those that know for sure what they want to do, but it is the opposite. The people who are hell bent on doing one thing the rest of their life, GREAT! This idea would help them out. The first three years can be electives related to their study, a minor that compliments their major, and anything else that can be taken to get them ready for even an internship over the summer in their desired field of study. They might even realize that it is not what they want to do, and still have the chance to jump right in to something else. I just think that trying to have your mind made up in high school, so that you are on the "normal" 4 year graduation path of college, is a little much.