Undergraduate students majoring in Business or in the Sciences should not be required to take any courses in the Humanities since those courses won’t benefit their future careers.Write a response to the prompt in which you discuss whether or not you agr

Studying humanities in addition to major courses forces business students to spend some of their limited time to humanities which could have been utilised on studying major subjects only. It also put additional financial burden in terms of attendance at classes and stay in a college hostel, which is required to study these courses. While there are no reservations that students who are studying business or science should not study humanities since studying these extra courses would consume precious time, there are reasons to believe that study of humanities would make them better business managers or better scientists. Humanities provides them the opportunity to learn from the past, since it covers courses on how human civilisation evolved from ancient times to modern times, and enable them to produce new business solutions as per the changing needs of the contemporary time.

First reason that supports the idea of studying humanities along with business or science is to understand this world or even any issue holistically which is not restricted to any one field of study. Humanities has potential to provide business managers to understand consumer psychology by using behavioral subjects that are not covered in business and science courses. By understanding the markets and the people constituted in that market, business managers are able to devise solutions and goods, which consumers buy or consume to satisfy their desires. For instance, the launch of Coca-Cola, a beverage in India, again in 2012 was became successful since their managers were able to apply the concepts of hierarchy theory of needs, which is a concept of humanities. Therefore, humanities complements business courses.

Another reason that buttresses the narrative of supporting business or science courses with humanities is that humanities supports business managers and scientists to think creatively and do innovation to cope with contemporary problems. Every business, be it technology or beverages, needs creative ideas to produce goods and market them effectively so that idea is embraced by the public. Humanities help business managers to develop marketing campaign that touches people's minds and hearts and thus make products successful. This can be illustrated by the marketing campaign of Cadbury, a producer of chocolate, which was launched in 2002 and reshaped its product offerings. Before this campaign, there was gradual decline in sales of chocolates since people were being aware about health effects arising from sugar intake. The campaign showed chocolates as something that brings relatives, friends and even distant people close to each other by using chocolates as gift for festivals. The marketing team confirmed in 2004 in CNBC TV interview that idea was generated by referring to human psychology in terms of relations, a branch of humanities. Thus, humanities provide foundation for business courses to create innovative campaigns.

However, one such argument that contends that humanities should not be studied by students who study business or science is that it would reduce the time and costs involved in a college degree. Every bachelor degree or to some extent master degree in business requires student to study some subjects that are not directly related with the majors. Hence, these students spend extra time to complete these courses and thus incur additional costs for this extended time in college. A good example of this is an MBA degree in India that requires students to study 6 trimesters over two year period. These trimesters have eight courses, which are related to humanities. The study conducted by All India Management Association in 2016 concluded that by removing these extra courses from the syllabus would reduce the time period of MBA degree by three months and thus students would be able to join job markets three months earlier. Hence, humanities should not be included in the syllabus of those courses that are concentrated on business or science.

As can be seen from above paragraphs that although removing humanities courses from syllabus enables to reduce time and costs involved in a degree, it provides students necessary skills to be successful since humans are bound be relations and work in a society that has certain beliefs and religions. Therefore, humanities should be studied by business or science students since it can make them better managers or scientists.