AAS degree holder. My "2-year" degree was still 96 credit hours, a bachelors degree is about 120. At least a semester's worth of my schooling would be considered "general." In this country, a high school diploma doesn't mean you're ready for college, as many school systems produce graduates who are illiterate (either functionally or for real can't read). So I had to take basic English, speech, any humanities course, and intro-level psych. This is to mostly weed out people who would rather get high and play xbox than show up for class.

This is kind of necessary for a lot of community college programs that are also very competitive and actually have hard caps on the number of people accepted. If there are 150-200 people trying to get into a program that accepts less than 20 applicants then these general education courses can become a tiebreaker, a way to wittle down the applicant pool. This is opposed to the majority of undergrad programs that will accept anyone who can borrow enough money, especially the for-profit schools.