<p>I'm going into my senior year of civil engineering and the last liberal arts class I took was 4 semesters ago. I think this is a major flaw in engineering education. Yes, yes, I know that engineering is very broad and there's much to learn, but I feel like we're missing out on learning how to think as anything but someone who solves a problem on yellowish-green paper and puts a little box around the solution (all hail the glorious boxed answer). </p>
<p>I'm not saying that engineers need to be taking advanced English lit. with tons of reading, but how about 1-2 hour seminar classes designed especially for engineers or other science majors without a lot of curriculum flexibility? (I come from a large state school where this would be feasible).</p>
<p>I used to be of the opinion that liberal arts classes were a useless waste of time meant for the future lawyers and/or hippies. Now, the thought of 1 to 2 hour seminar courses in philosophy or history (maybe even history of engineering) type classes would be a welcome break. </p>
<p>Anyways, I just had to get that off my chest.</p>
<p>At my university (which is an engineering-only school), the only classes not related to math/science/engineering that are required to graduate are ethics, sociology and economics (9 credits out of 120).</p>
<p>The education system is a bit different from the US over here though (by here, I mean Quebec). Instead of having 6 years of middle/high school followed by 4 years of university, we have 5 years of high school, 2 years of Cegep (which is a post-secondary education institution, similar to a community college, except that it’s required to enter university) and 3 years of university (for most bachelor’s degrees anyway… as always, engineering students get screwed and have to take 4 years in university). Anyway, even though there are some specialized classes in Cegep (math, physics, chemistry, etc.), everyone is required to take three litterature classes and three philosophy classes.</p>
<p>I don’t think having engineering-only humanities is a good idea–it seems like they’d make them easier or applied, turning them into business classes.</p>
<p>I like the idea of more humanities in the engineering curriculum, but frankly, engineering students have enough work as it is. You’d have to cut other stuff out to put this in, and I’m not sure if that is a good decision.</p>
<p>I definitely agree. I am attending college to get a well-rounded education, and I think more liberal arts/humanities class correlates with well-roundedness of the education.</p>