What is the purpose of college education? What is the purpose of the curriculum designed by academic affairs specialists? Are the two directly connected to each other or do they serve contradictory purposes? These are the questions that each institution of higher education must answer when examining the requirements it will impose on a student to earn a degree from that institution. Many would say that a college education expands students' minds and prepares them to experience life in the real world. The skills a student learns in college classes can prepare them for a career through content preparation and can help a student think differently about the world around them. Courses offered across the humanities and social sciences don't always translate directly into careers like engineering classes might. The requirements of these courses are a remnant of yesteryear and the general liberal arts degrees once coveted by colleges and universities. The humanities and social sciences required at the heart of most higher education programs today seek to attempt to provide a well-balanced education to students, particularly to those students who would not otherwise choose to take such courses. Students not interested in art, music, or literature are asked to take a course that requires them to learn something about at least one of these areas. Particularly for the few remaining liberal arts colleges, this requirement is designed in hopes of producing a well-rounded student with minimal background knowledge in all areas rather than just their chosen area of ​​specialization. In redesigning a humanities and social sciences curriculum, the first decision to be made must be what… the middle of the paper… serves to do for our student population? If these lessons are here to enlighten our students in the ways of classical theorists, writers, and philosophers, then we must adhere to the classical methods of teaching and how we require students to complete these requirements. If we strive to provide students with a useful method for seeing the world outside their sphere of knowledge, changes must be made to help students discover these subject areas not just as a requirement but as courses that helped develop who I am personally and professionally. Works Cited Bloom, A.D. (1987). The Closed American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students. New York: Simon and Schuster.Levine, L.W. (1996). The Opening of the American Mind: Canons, Culture, and History. Boston: Beacon Press.