How long before that, did you get your bachelors?
A while.
1. Today, they are all about forcing you to take extra bullshit classes.
2. And even if it is as easy as you recall, A. Good for you, and B. does not help the vast majority that need at least 4 years.
1. Still the same number of credit hours is needed, that has not changed.
Well maybe... but the problem is still BS classes.
When I was in college, I was taking course on computer programming. Part of my required classes was to take personal finance, which taught practically nothing about personal finance, and I had a choice of executive management communication, which was baffling to me, or I could have taken advance analytical analysis.
None of those courses did anything for me at all, and I don't remember a single thing from any of them.
Even back then (because I'd been working full time for 4 years by the time I was in this course), I was thinking I could personally teach my own course simply called "Polite Communication 101 (how not to get fired at a job)" and teach more useful stuff, than the crap spewed in these course.
In fact, I could have possibly even taught the personal finance course myself, and done a better job.
The bottom line is, most of the required extra courses are garbage, and useless.
And by the way, we found out why.
Now this is from 2002 or so. What the teachers themselves told us, was that it was a matter of Union politics. The teachers unions wanted to make sure that various other departments had classes that were required for degrees they didn't apply to, specifically to guarantee teacher jobs.
Meaning, if you have 90% of your incoming students going into engineering, you as a English teacher are in trouble. So you just make a "communications" class required for an engineering degree, and voila! You have job security.
This is exactly what they told us happened.