‘Oh, My God, Where Is This Going?’ When Computer-Science Majors Take Improv

It's kinda odd to see these sorts of "gen-ed" requirements from the UK. US college degrees seem to be lengthened a year and required to be partially filled with what appears to be a bunch of irrelevant classes. I'd be pretty annoyed given the cost of tuition if, as an adult, I was expected to do a bunch of drama, or humanities, or languages classes prior to graduation... for a CS degree.

To me, and I suspect most people in Europe, the primary purpose of going to university is to specialise in one particular course area and gain a higher qualification. Of course, there is space to ensure students practice e.g. public speaking, working within a team, project management and technical writing within these constraints. But generally, all of the classes will be relevant to the subject area you are studying unless you _wish_ to take a module from a different degree course as an option. The idea of depriving an adult from being able to make that decision for themselves is disheartening.

Most students would surely have already worked through and experienced a great deal of other classes in high school in order to receive a well-rounded education _prior_ to attending university.

So sure, if you want to get outside of your comfort zone, take an optional class or sign up for a society. But this whole concept of forcing it into an unrelated degree is odd.

Not a bad idea I think. I had a voluntary communications class that I signed up for over 2 years in school. It helped a lot in preparing for interactions and presentations in the business world, but also life in general.

It was also very uncomfortable for me.

This feels like it's leaning pretty hard on a stereotype.

Theatre can help you get over stage-fright, there's some real value there. I took 3 semesters of theatre in high school and that was the biggest gain for me.

Paywalled.

Would be nice to have a tag or something to show that