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Biology. Business. Engineering. These majors are vastly different, but the current Undergraduate Core Requirement system sticks every student in the same freshman and sophomore composition classes. The proposed and ever-changing Common Undergraduate Experience attempts to solve the problem by slashing sophomore composition off the list and cutting the writing emphasis requirements as well. Sure, it can be argued that all these English hours don’t do any good for the premed major who went the route of science precisely so he or she would never have to write an essay again. However, people in these majors need to know how to write. Now, the long-winded English style of writing may not always be appropriate for non-liberal arts majors (heck, even journalism writing is a far cry from English), but there is a definite need to be able to write, and to do it well. After all, you can’t succeed in virtually any prominent job today without a decent writing ability. Taking one class the first semester of your freshman year in college isn’t enough to prepare students for the “real world.” The current system could use some modifications, but we can’t take out essential writing requirements. Instead, the university should adopt a system in which there is still the basic freshman composition class, but rather than doing away with the three hours of sophomore composition, the CUE could adopt a major-specific writing class. Business majors could take a class in terse, report style writing and Biology majors could learn the style of writing that will help them in their future pursuits. After all, learning how to write a persuasive paper is good, but building on a broad writing foundation with useful specifics is even better. |
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