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Comment by kermittd | Hacker News Reader

Non-Stem; I'll give it go but the answer may be considered a cop out.

I don't think STEM majors should have to take writing courses nor non-stem majors take math courses.

This should not be done in University but earlier. I'm skeptical that forcing these two categories of students take these courses make them effective with in the subject matter or a more enlightened person as the excuse goes.

IMO it is a way to keep professors who teach unneccessary coursework employed.

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If you're a STEM person on my team that cannot write in a coherent and precise fashion, I am going to find you and you had better pray you're worth retraining, because this is a non-negotiable part of any technical career you could hope to have.

If you want regular promotions, probably watch your spelling too.

Where do you work? Are you hiring?

I sincerely wish that this was the norm, but my experience has been that, on average, people with the word "engineer" in their degree can't be bothered with such piddling details as spelling and grammar.

I cofounded a small tech shop in flyover country. Mostly fitness and music stuff. Not hiring at the moment, but if you do native mobile, hit me up, we do a lot of stuff and it's only a matter of time before I need another native guy. We do remote-- you gotta be able to write an email.

I disagree. STEM majors should have to take at least a couple of writing courses as part of a university degree (I had to take two: English Comp and Technical Writing). I'm freaking tired of trying to decipher some of the poorly written documentation produced by my fellow software engineers.

Assuming your fellow engineers are college educated, you've just invalidated your own point. The required writing has obviously not helped them.

They could be worse without the training. Remember most people have 12+ years of learning how to write, a few college classes are only going to do so much.

There we go right here. In theory people say engineers need to write cleary,accurately, whatever adverb is used to describe it in order to get a job etc.

I wonder how many engineers get hired for their writing ability?

In fact I bet a college educated engineer or at least one who went to college writes well enough as to not interfere with their work.

I can't imagine that a STEM degree given to someone without basic writing skills would be worth the paper it's printed on. Both from an academic perspective and from a job skills / industry perspective.

Why wouldn't STEM majors take writing courses?

The ability to express ideas, concepts and procedures in writing is a fundamental skill for any professional.

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