Claim: Universities should require every student to take a variety of courses outside the student's major field of study. Reason: Acquiring knowledge of various academic disciplines is the best way to become truly educated.

The study of different courses helps the one to develop a thorough characteristic. Educated members of societies, must possess at least a minimum knowledge from several fields. Let us take a medical doctor for instance. The doctor needs to know literature as the literature refines the language he or she speaks. The doctor requires the knowledge of working with computer softwares to manage information and be up to date. He/she needs also to have some levels of psychology. The symptoms of his or her patient might be a hallucination and without any drug, the patient might be cured.

Aside from the necessity of having a basic knowledge of different fields, for the sake of the major fields of study, it is advisable to study different courses. There is no absolute red line dividing fields from each other. Consider When Steve Jobs was attending the calligraphy classes, he was complaining about the lack of usefulness of such classes. Until later he used the art to make the first generation of computers compatible with having different fonts. Study of different disciplines equips us with enough knowledge to have a comprehensive view. All the other programmers were thinking about the algorithm and codes, but it was Steve Jobs who felt the need of artistic change in the computers.

As far as reason is concerned, with one qualification, I strongly agree with the statement’s reason as the students with only one developed aspect cannot be titled as a truly educated person. During the long-term of education, it is expected that students develop multidimensional characteristics, however they should also become an expert in at least one field. Otherwise, the pedantic personalities coming out of universities would be of no benefit for the societies. The special expertise should be sacrificed for the shallow knowledge of many other fields.

Finally, the more education procedures become professional, the less should the other courses be required. This is because the excess number of courses outside the major field can distract the one from focusing on the major field. At the doctorate level, there is no time to spend on the outside-major field-study as the student should make a career and deal with the major field within the limited time. At that level, the student has passed nearly two decades of his or her life in learning different fields. Then, his/her time should be dedicated to the major field and write a professional thesis to prove his or her expertise in a certain field of study.

In short, as discussed, indeed, true education is tied to the study of various courses outside the major field to help students develop a multidimensional characteristic. However, as the levels of education goes higher, the out of major field study should be lesser required. The students also need to become expert in a limited time in a major field of study.