Universities should require every student to take a variety of courses outside the student’s major field

Universities should require every student to take a variety of courses outside the student’s major field

I fundamentally agree that learning knowledge from different fields could greatly benefit students and help them to be truly educated. Nevertheless, when we come to the claim that university should require every student to take a variety of courses outside the student’s major field, we should also notice that extending the proposition too far risk undermining its objectives.

The primary reason I agree with the reason part of the topic is that the sciences are inextricably associated with each other, and no area of any intellectual inquiry could develop in the vacuum. To advance the knowledge in a certain field we must learn the interplay among them all. Of course, to get truly educated, students must master a certain field of study, and then contribute to the society. However, to be excellent in the field they need to learn about other fields of study. For instance, students on social politics can not fully understand the subject without knowledge about such psychological, social, and historical trends behind a politic subject. Anthropology students cannot excel without understanding the social and political events that shapes cultures. Even to a rather independent subject like program engineering, it essentially tied up with some non-technical subjects like commercial, communications and media.

Another merit of the reason raised in the topic is that true education amounts to far more than gaining the knowledge and ability to accomplish study and work in a major field. True education can facilitate an understanding of themselves and tolerance and respect opinions of others. Courses in psychology, sociology, and anthropology all serve to cultivate such understandings. Furthermore, true education could provide insight and perspective regarding the status in the society and the physical and metaphysical world. Courses in politics, philosophy, theology, even sciences such as astronomy and physics could help students get this perspective. Last but not the least, no student could be truly educated without gaining aesthetic ability to appreciate the world around us through education of literature, fine arts, and performing arts.

Based on the reasons above, it is generally a sound advice to require students to take part in courses outside their fields of study. Nevertheless, the call for a broad education experience as the path to becoming truly educated comes with one important disadvantage. A student who merely extend his or her areas of study without special emphasis on any one becomes as dilettante. Thus, in the pursuit of being truly educated, students need to be careful not to overextend themselves or risk defeating an important objective of education.

In the final analysis, to become truly educated, one has to strike a proper balance in one’s educational pursuits. On the one hand, students should strive to excel in the specific requirements of their major course of study. At the same time, they should complement those efforts by pursuing courses in a variety of other areas as well.