When Boston University added the College of General Studies to its list of schools in 1952, the idea was to give a chance to World War II and Korean War veterans who wanted a college education in the liberal arts, and it was suitable for that purpose.

But over the years, the purpose of the school has clearly shifted, and CGS now caters largely to students who applied for admission into the College of Arts and Sciences or other schools but were not accepted because their grades did not meet a certain standard. Though CGS students are often criticized for not measuring up with their classmates in other schools, this criticism is often untrue and undeserved. But it is unfair to students in other schools that CGS students can transfer into any other school with only minimal requirements. For example, a student in CAS must achieve a B in COM 201 while CGS students need only a C to transfer into the College of Communication, even though CAS is a harder school to get into in the first place.

If the university wishes to demonstrate that CGS students are on par with their CAS counterparts, they should be subject to the same requirements.

But this is no solution to a much larger problem. The university as a whole suffers in its rankings largely because the CGS program is easily linked to high-school curricula: students have little choice when it comes to class registration, as in high schools. Freshmen, for instance, are only allowed to choose one non-CGS class per semester.

Of course, CGS has its benefits: students easily socialize with others who take many of the same classes, and all are still unsure about their major. CGS administrators also pride themselves in hiring mostly Ph.D. professors, even though courses closely resemble those in secondary schools.

If this curriculum attracts students at the top of their high-school graduating class, it should continue to enroll them into the college. But if this is not the case, and CGS only exists to boost the university’s endowment, administrators should rethink the impact this school has on BU’s 10 others.

The university should seriously consider phasing out CGS from its list of colleges, and more fully integrate these students with the rest of the university. While CGS may potentially bring in a substantial portion of BU’s endowment, it also likely hurts its ranking on the list of top universities. Administrators should weigh these factors into deciding whether to keep CGS a part of this university, and if this method fails to work, they should invest in a new scale.