I see your point. I will note, however, that I see a lot of candidates with pre-professional and professional track degrees who are trying to advance as managers but who simply can’t write or present well. It’s a real impediment. Writing in the sciences or engineering just isn’t the same as persuasive writing, and I could go on and on about the disservice b-schools do by building bad habits for jargon. I do hope the OP will confront some distribution requirements for the humanities. It will help, it really will.
100% agree that it’s a big impediment to not have solid communication skills, even in a techy or engineering position if you want to advance in your career.
My D just sat in on a VC presentation yesterday and said the presenter was absolutely horrible. Terrible slides, terrible speaking skills, and he read from his notes the whole time without looking up. She said it was a real shame because it could have been a very interesting topic if he had better public speaking skills. It was so bad that her boss, also sitting in on the meeting, ended up emailing her about another project.
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Writing about fictional literature (as emphasized in high school English courses) is not the same either. Presentation skills are somewhat different as well.
But do colleges generally cover all of these areas of communication skills in their major and general education requirements? Seems unlikely.
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What if a course in texting would satisfy the school’s writing requirement ?
(My apologies as this tongue-in-cheek post should have been directed to the OP.)
Writing forces students to organize their thoughts and to express thoughts in a coherent manner. Writing also makes one accountable for those thoughts by memorializing them.
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Some colleges do (but certainly not widespread).