Students must take a wide variety of classes while receiving their education at Baker University, but a computer science course no longer is a part of that list.

Baker has decided to remove the computer science requirement, and the popular CS 151 Computing for Non-Science Majors class, from the list of science courses that can be taken as a general education class.

Faculty senate passed the proposal Tuesday to change the computing and natural sciences section, with a requirement of nine hours and three disciplines, to just a natural science section with six hours and two disciplines.

The good news: now students who have not taken a computer science course will only have to take two science courses to satisfy the gen ed requirement instead of three courses.

The bad news: students who already have taken the class, or currently are taking it, are out of luck as it will not count as a science class, even if it did when the class was taken, and people will still need two more science credits.

That’s right, if you’ve taken it, the class is now nothing more than just a class.

That is, unless you are a computer science major or need the class as supporting coursework.

The fact that this decision is being made after students were able to drop classes for this semester makes three of their credit hours no longer useful.

If the decision would have been made earlier, the 72 students enrolled in the class could have dropped it and taken a class they need to graduate.

Students do not have to take any additional classes as a result of the change in science requirements, but instead of taking a course that will go toward their graduation requirements, they took a computer class that now is just another class.