Students have to complete a wide range of courses in order to graduate from a specific field of study. Majors in economics require courses of psychology which is a topic from a totally different field. The prompt provides a suggestion for making it mandatory for students of a field to take a variety of courses outside of their respective field of study. I agree with the suggestion conditionally due to the three factors mentioned below.
If the variety of courses from distinct fields are somehow relevant or helpful for a student’s major, then it provides an opportunity for them to understand their field in a much clearer and connected manner. If a student of computer science is studying economics which belongs to a different field, this economic knowledge will help to understand the economic feasibility of a computer project that student is contemplating to undertake. Once a student can discern the profits, expenditure and prospect of a certain computer project, it expedites the performance and quells the financial doubts. Thus, knowledge from a different field might help to understand the field better and even navigate efficiently towards success in the major field.
Eliminating courses irrelevant to the major field of study gives a student more time to sharpen the skills and embark on new endeavours on that particular field. As each and every field is getting huge with the advent of modern technologies, every student will find things outside of the academic courses which might seem worthy of exploring. Owing to huge course works from courses not benefitting that particular field, there is hardly anytime left to pursue their interest in that field outside of their academic activities. If that computer science student has the freedom to reject courses like marketing, it might help to gain insights about the new development taking place in machine learning by providing the valuable time. In this manner, allowing students freedom to eliminate courses not relevant to their field will help the students to work on things that might help him greatly later on in their career.
Tuition fees are another concern which is too important to ignore. Imposing a multitude of courses from different fields will definitely increase the financial burden on students. Mentionable number of students are not willing to pursue college degree just because the financial cost is simply too heavy for them. Instead of looking for ways to reduce these fees, assigning a variety of courses will reduce the number of students opting to attend college by higher rates. Furthermore, the mental pressure of earning that extra money for that particular course just disincentivizes them to leave education once and for all.
Considering the aforementioned factors, I agree on assigning courses from different fields only if they are of substantiate importance to the major field of study. Courses relevant to this field will also help students improve their knowledge on the field. Exclusion of irrelevant courses will provide students with important time to learn a new skill and relieve the financial tensions coming from the extra assigned course.