What Should A College Education Entail?

Abhinav Sawhney

This is an issue that will receive a highly diverse opinion from different individuals. So the question is what should a student learn when at college. Should they only be taught what is required of them at the workplace and in their careers or should all college students go through a certain number of similar courses that may not necessarily be relevant or required in their ultimate field of study.

One way to look at it is that the sole purpose of a college education is to get a good job and build a successful career. So if that is the main criteria, they should only learn material that will benefit them at their respective work places. Taking extra courses that are not a requirement for the particular degree programme do nothing but elongate the time needed to attain a college degree. This extra time is accompanied by an extra cost. Each course taken by a student at college has a handsome cost associated with it. So the question is, why should a student have to pay for courses that will not help in his her career.

Often colleges pay tremendous amount of emphasis on theoretical matters. Students are given firm historical background on every concept that they learn. So, especially for majority of the Tech students that are doing engineering, such theories may seem erroneous. Skills that are directly applicable and will be required at the job place should be given most emphasis. For example an electrical engineer may fail to understand the need for him/her to learn about the different types of medicines for an illness in a mandatory health class.

On the other hand this issue may be looked at from a very different perspective. Each college student should have a certain minimum amount of knowledge on several subjects. So each college student is expected to know certain things. Also having certain mandatory courses for everyone ensures that each person that goes to college will be quite well rounded, and will avoid the one dimensional view that studying just one specific subject may create. For example an English course may not seem very important for lots of engineering students but what they fail to realise is that the valuable communication skills that they pick up in this class will serve them throughout their careers. Another question that needs to be asked is, if colleges do not take the responsibility to preserve history and classical views then who will? Is it the responsibility of parents to instill these values and views in their children?