Is it really necessary to teach unscientific knowledges of humanities to STEM students ? In Europe such as UK, Germany, France etc STEM students just learn their related STEM courses so that they can graduate in 3 years whereas in US 4 years. Since1 more year of tuition and living and starting 1 year late in job is a considerable loss of time and finance to students and their parents. These issues must be considered in favour of students who accumulate so much loan debts rather than US universities and relate academics.
Study humanities to appreciate life. There is much more to life than career and money.
German technical universities also urge students to join some non-technical courses as integral part of their studies (humanities, social sciences, economics). This is due to modern principles of differentiated, competency-orientated curriclum design and to the idea of engineering education as a consequence of WW2 and Nazism after 1945. Basically, concepts of comprehensive and diverse engineering education are being favored, implying a core of scientific knoledge. Anyway, unscientific knowledge should not not take first place in any subject in academia, I guess, neither in STEM nor in any other subject.
Sinan Ibaguner There are good reasons as to why universities in general should offer compulsory humanities courses. However, those reasons are based on the fact that humanities are sciences, and not unscientific knowledge. I would have thought that at this point the importance of ethics, for example, in the educational process offered in higher education was not an issue anymore, but let me try to explain: it's no good for employers (including STEM research centers), a highly skilled STEM graduate with no communication skills nor assertiveness, that can allow him to work effectively on teams of multidisciplinary professionals.
It's also no good for our global community to have STEM graduates who are highly skilled in their technical field of knowledge, if they have no idea how to base their moral judgments about their work, or anything they do.
That's why every higher education student should have well designed, serious compulsory humanities courses, not just STEM students.
Also, higher education is not a race, it's a personal process. No one is arriving 1 year later than anyone.
About school debt in US graduates, it is due to the incredibly high tuition fees their universities charge, not because they have to stay I year more than their European counterparts, I believe.
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