A Better Title

Ok, this is not going to be relevant to you if you’re not from NTU… I just have to get this off my chest.

It’s really confusing to have such terms as GE, PE, GER, and UE in NTU. The multitude of names came about due to the updating of the academic system in NTU. As if the different terms are not confusing enough, people confuse all the names altogether too!

Under the (very) old system, we have to fulfill a few categories of modules in order to graduate from NTU. Other than the core module, we have to complete modules from the following categories as well:

• GE (General Elective). Somewhat like a broadening module; for general knowledge. Subjects taken under this category can come from almost any modules offered by any of the schools.
• PE (Prescribed Elective). A more restricted version of GE. Not all subjects can be taken under this category. To graduate, a student has to take a few modules from subcategories such as arts, humanities and social sciences (ASS AHSS), business and management (BM), and science, technology, and something else (STS; I forgot what the last S stands for).

Then under the (updated) old system, the name of GE is changed to UE, which stands for Unrestricted Elective. It slightly clears up the definition. But most students still stick to the old name GE, so for a time the category is known as GE/UE. So under this system, we have the following categories:

• GE/UE (General Elective/Unrestricted Elective)
• PE (Prescribed Elective)

Now under the new system, the names are revamped one more time. Now the categories are called GER-UE (General Education Requirement-Unrestricted Elective) and GER-PE (General Education Requirement-Prescribed Elective). More details about this can be found here. So under the new system, the following categories exist:

• GER-UE (General Education Requirement-Unrestricted Elective)
• GER-PE (General Education Requirement-Prescribed Elective)

Here’s the problem. Some students from the new system for some reason like to call the categories UE and GE. What they mean are GER-UE and GER-PE respectively. Shortening GER-UE to UE makes perfect sense, but I have no idea why they have to shorten GER-PE using the two initial letters as GE.

Now UE is fine, but GE is extremely confusing. On one hand, the letters “GE” exist in both GER-UE and GER-PE. Not only that, but students from the old system uses GE to refer to what is now called GER-UE! In the mind of the students under the old system, the students of the new system are referring to the same thing!

Confused yet?

If anything, this shows that changing the name of something which has been used for quite a while is a very bad idea. Just like the story of Microsoft which for no reason decided to change the all-familiar “Add/Remove Programs” to “Programs and Features” in Windows Vista. It’s a bad, bad idea, because most people still remember the item in the Control Panel as “Add/Remove Program” instead of the latter.

Luckily for Microsoft, they didn’t create a new feature with a name sounding similar to “Add/Remove Program”, otherwise even more people will be confused by the change.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.