[jyl]

I don't agree that all liberal arts professors are worthless monkeys, although this particular professor sounds like one.

I certainly agree that students should not graduate from college without a decent grounding in science. IMHO, basic math (through integral calculus, at least) and basic physics (mechanics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism) should be required for everyone. Any well prepared student should be able to complete this with 50% of his/her class load in the freshman year. And the better-prepared students could have this done before they even start college. Maybe you get to choose computer science, chemistry, or something similar instead of the physics. It's not so much because everyone should know Faraday's law, it's about forcing students to think in a rigorous, disciplined and detailed way on problems that demand a precise answer, not just a bunch of aesthetic opinions.

As a side benefit, this would actually help the engineering majors meet girls, since they'd now have classes with all the perky co-ed poli sci majors . . .

No offense to the poli sci majors here, should you choose to reveal yourselves.

I don't know that the liberal arts requirements are so onerous, though.
I got my B.A. from UC Berkeley with hardly any liberal arts classes. In four years / twelve quarters, I recall a single classical lit class (interesting), one English lit class (not interesting), one beginning psych class (worthless), and one history class (very fun - found tons of records deep in the library stacks on the WWII strategic bombing of Germany, wrote a paper on it). All the rest were mathematics, physics, and some computer programming. Oh, yeah, a bit of economics, German, and military history with the ROTC guys.