Education reform is imperative especially interdisciplinary courses

As a university student, I also strongly disagree with the concept that we should only receive job-oriented training during college years. According to Hutchins in The University of Utopia, “The object of the educational system is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. In that way, education is becoming nothing more than a trade school.”

In my opinion, colleges should not only satisfy the need of the community for workers and require students only to take courses that are related to their fields of studies or future careers. Instead, colleges should provide more chances for interdisciplinary learning, and encourage students to communicate with other people outside of their fields.

Take my school, NTNU, for example, there are some interdisciplinary courses, such as “Globalization Studies and Concerns”, “Dialogue between Technology and Humanity”, “Physics and Life”, etc. Rather than limiting students to their specialization, these courses help students to have more critical and integral thinking.

More importantly, by bringing different disciplines together for a greater common understanding of the topic as a whole, interdisciplinary courses help students understand their own ways of thinking, learning, and imagining, enabling them to become independent learners.

Therefore, these courses can help contribute to intellectual and spiritual developments of the whole person and thus let students have better psychological and conceptual preparations for their future careers. However, the problem is that there are not enough interdisciplinary courses in my school and in other colleges.

While blaming students for entering the job market with a wrong mindset, our education system itself should also be reformed.

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