Engineering students should not have to take nontechnical courses. The content of these courses can be easily learned outside university. Also, taking nontechnical courses means there is less time to take engineering, math, and science courses.
The engineering courses are much more important for engineering students just like arts courses are much more important for arts students. Arts students don’t have to take engineering courses so why do engineering students have to take arts courses? Courses in dancing, acting, gender studies, and sociology aren’t more important than courses in calculus, electronics, software development, and control systems. It’s a form of anti-engineering bigotry for universities to assign greater importance to arts courses than engineering courses.
High school and elementary school are for providing a general education. High school and elementary school could be significantly enhanced to cover more important nontechnical material and engineering material. In university, students should be able to focus on their fields of study.
If electrical or computer engineering students can forego nontechnical courses, then they can take additional courses in software development, computer architecture, computer communication networks, digital electronics, analog electronics, control systems, communication systems, power systems, physics, mathematics, biology, chemistry, environmental science, etc. The preceding courses in engineering, math, and science would be more useful than nontechnical courses for most engineers.
Accreditation organizations and universities requiring students to take nontechnical courses instead of engineering courses are doing more harm than good. They should stop requiring engineering students to take nontechnical courses.
Image Citation
[1] Visual Arts Courses. Team Leverage Edu, 2023.
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