Students prize course content they deem relevant to their professional aspirations. If they determine it’s not relevant (and they make that decision about lots of course content), students slog their way through the course, not bothering to learn the material in ways that promote its retention. Many of us have discovered the shortsightedness of our early decisions about content relevance. I for one ended up needing to relearn basic accounting even though it was listed on my transcript with a passing grade. Unfortunately, it doesn’t cross many student minds that the content in any course can be used to develop an array of job-related skills.
