Issue 13 求拍，谢谢！

helencumc

Issue 13: University should require everystudent to take a variety of courses outside the student’s field of study

When talking about university requirementsfor students, some people insist that the university should require that everystudent take a variety of courses outside their field of expertise. It may looklike a good suggestion, at the first glance, which could enhance the overall wellbeingof a student attending the college, yet after closer examination, there couldbe flaws in this claim.
Of course, we have to admit that there arelots of benefits of taking a variety of courses. The most obvious one is thatit could broaden a student’s understanding of different disciplines so thatthey can come up with different ideas when doing research in their own field,just like the combination of mathematics and economics could create the newfield of Game Theory, which later developed into market design which greatlyfacilitates the efficiency of the market.
Moreover, some courses could improve thesoft skills of the student. For example, a student who has taken the course ofWestern Music may be well informed of the history of western music and can evenmake comments on several master pieces of some great musicians when attendingconferences or talking about business plans with prospective clients, which isa big advantage compared with those who has not taken any this kind of courses,given that both of the students are in the major of business.
Yet, despite there are merits of broadenedcourse requirements, there are certain concerns that should be taken into account.First of all, we may ask if the university has the physical conditions toprovide such a variety of courses. Although universities are not meant forprofit, they should always consider this simple cost-benefit issue so that theycan continuously run the university and avoid bankruptcy. If the universitylacks necessary fund to support the education in courses other than the majorones, it may not be a good idea to require every student to take those coursesfor they simply don’t exist!
Another thing to be considered is thatthere are opportunity costs for students and teachers to take those courses,given that the university is rich enough to provide them. Imagine that a mathgenius who really hates literature but is forced to take the whole series of Englishpoetry. If he is obedient and takes those courses, he could be reallyfrustrated to find that he could never excel in this classroom dominated bythose girls born for poetry or he could get high grades for sacrificing histime for math, the filed which he really wants to devote more time to. The timehe could have done math research is the opportunity cost of his taking poetryclass, yet we don’t know exactly the result of this. It could be that the mathfield lost one genius yet the university has one more poor student.
The same thing goes for the teachers. Ifthe teacher has to spend time giving lectures to students not familiar with thetopics, or even hating the materials, he/she would have to struggle through thecourses to get people understand and like what he/she is trying to convey.He/She could use the time to do more research in the field rather than teachingtired and frustrated students, wasting both of their time.
Some may argue that the potential benefitof courses outside the major field could be immense, yet if this benefit cannotexceed the costs, no matter if they are direct or indirect, the plan shouldstill be suspended and close examination should be done.
In the summary, the university should becareful when placing requirements on students that all of them should take avariety of courses outside their major courses, and this judgment is based onthe cost-benefit analysis that the cost of the requirements should be less thanthe benefits.

jie54

除了佩服，，别无他言！！

wtorchid

基本是6分的水平了

helencumc

非常感谢你的点评   我写完后也举得举例过多，论点不强    以后会改进~