Simply, college should be a time to explore yourself. Yet nearly all post-secondary institutions traditionally impose an unambiguous academic curriculum, almost deciding a student's career path long before they can question their passion. Therefore, the institution's minimum conditions must be met for the student to be awarded the respected credit. For this reason, universities influence students to take standard core courses, even if the subject adds no value to future career aspirations. Additionally, there are many students in North America who suffer both mentally and physically to pass these core courses which in turn do not support their overall career choices. While many external factors impact the traditional college curriculum, such as: budget cuts leading to smaller class sizes, larger applications and fewer available seats, and low campus engagement, it is the looming disconnect between a student and the contributions of his students. future that really shook me. It is for this reason that I believe college students should have complete and total freedom in choosing post-secondary courses. 2013 Budget CutRecently, Alberta faced a devastating 6.8% cut in funding for post-secondary education during the 2013 budget, and this affected Mount Royal University (MRU), our institution, significantly with a “7.3% deficit” (Budget FAQs, mtroyal.ca) in the institutions' budget. New students had their fall 2013 registration delayed, while the MRU was quick to react to the painful funding cut of more than 7% when it recently promised a 2% increase (Budget FAQs, mtroyal.ca). Diplomas, such as the engineering transfer program and journalism certificate, were removed from offering entirely – even to those students who were already accepted into the program (Quirico, Swan, “Alberta's Post Secondary Schools React to Budget Cuts”). Not only have the cuts stopped new enrollments, but class sizes have also suffered. Courses that once held more than 25 students have now been reduced to 15 or perhaps 16 students. And if you managed to get into the course you wanted, consider yourself lucky, because I know I wasn't one of the lucky ones. Not only was my enrollment blocked, but I too was forced to struggle to choose the right courses to graduate. But how could I do that once I had completed all the required courses? If I wanted to graduate on time, I needed to choose Plan C courses to meet my needs as a full-time student??