I completely agree. However, we have not had that (lots of concepts) for decades. Universities are largely ideologically monocultural now. This isn't education, it's indoctrination.

And, when you include the fact that students are paying tens of thousands of dollars for all of their non-major courses, this quickly turns into a tragedy. Most people take decades to pay off their student loans.

General education needs to happen in K-12. There are plenty of cultures around the world where high school students graduate with impressive (compared to average US) cultural background and exposure.

Sometimes flipping things around can be useful. Nobody in their right mind would suggest an English or History major should be forced to take a solid year worth of CS coursework as a condition for obtaining the degree. Why is the reverse OK? It is not. We've just come to accept it.

Here's another thought experiment: Imagine I was allowed by the Department of Education to grant Bachelor degrees in CS while focusing 100% on CS coursework. My four-year graduates would absolutely destroy anyone from a university who wasted their time with non-STEM courses. They would be brutally better candidates for every job. It would be a truly unfair advantage. That's how our current system is damaging our young professionals. They are forcing them to waste a year of their lives on stuff nobody cares about when hiring.

I would speculate that what you’re seeing is society in general being much more of a monoculture than it used to be. Extremes still exist, but they are far fewer than they were 100 years ago, when people couldn’t even use certain water fountains because of the color of their skin.

Maybe the point you’re getting at is that universities used to be edgier—it was more of an environment for challenging the status quo and not being afraid of controversy. I agree that it’s extremely not like that anymore, to the point that even guest speakers on campus are frequently boycotted or threatened.

I think it may be indoctrination in a systemic way, but not as a conscious, active effort. I don’t think there’s a secret group of people deliberately making universities more monocultural with that as the intended outcome. But I recognize that a process may have naturally led to this regardless.

> General education needs to happen in K-12

I think there’s value in extending general education beyond what public schooling offers, which isn’t much. Public school really fails to engage students in meaningful and interesting ways. People graduate hating math and thinking it’s stupid and pointless because they’re never given context as to why it’s interesting, or shown all the cool things math allows us to do. Universities can engage people in topics they wouldn’t normally consider, and that’s where the value of general education comes in. My partner is a great example of this—she got to attend a series of university lectures when she was in high school, covering a broad range of topics designed for her age group to help them figure out what interested them. She attended a physics lecture on dark matter, and it genuinely sparked an interest in a topic she had previously found hideously boring. She now has a PhD and a prestigious career in that field, and it never would have happened without that generalized exposure that universities provide.

> Nobody in their right mind would suggest an English or History major should be forced to take a solid year worth of CS coursework as a condition for obtaining the degree. Why is the reverse OK? It is not.

I would say English is definitely a worthwhile course for CS majors, due to my previous point.

> Here's another thought experiment

Yes, I agree. A university is not optimal for maximum efficiency in job performance, but that’s not really its primary goal. And I think universities are fine the way they are (minus the monoculture, the expense, and the problematic treatment of grad students, along with the publish-or-perish mentality). That said, there should also be better, more accessible mainstream options for the kind of training you’re describing.

Well, first, the government should not be in the business of student loan guarantees. This inflates costs and provides incentives for padding education with expensive coursework that nobody values.

Degrees should not force non-degree coursework on students. While I tend to discuss STEM, I am sure this could be applied to other degrees. For example, my sister got a degree in Social Work at a major US university. She had to endure courses such as Statistics. Why? Even people in STEM fields hate statistics.

Yes, of course, I agree with you regarding courses such as English being important for STEM graduates. However, it would be my requirement and expectation that high school should graduate people who are able to communicate and express themselves without having to pay thousands of dollars in university for the same learning.

> an environment for challenging the status quo and not being afraid of controversy

Sure. And yet, when you have classes like "Young Karl Marx" forced upon students in direct opposition with reality, well, what the hell is that?

If we are to speak about delivering culture, we have to talk about the Greeks, the great philosophers, the law and other matters. Art, music, history and religion with as little bias as possible. Yes, of course, teach about Karl Marx. However, any reasonable treatment of the subject would clearly have to also deliver the conclusion that these are ideas the world has tried and determined to be disastrous at many levels. To be clear, the world has still to discover perfection --which likely does not exist-- however, teaching failed ideologies at a mass scale as if it were utopia only serves to destroy society.

> I don’t think there’s a secret group of people deliberately making universities more monocultural

Correct. Of course. No, this is like a control system with no feedback that, once it started to go off the rails had no feedback loop to correct it. It just happened.

I think Niall Ferguson provides good insight as to how this happened. Here's one of his interviews:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdeFJ4WCqhk

> she got to attend a series of university lectures when she was in high school, covering a broad range of topics designed for her age group to help them figure out what interested them. She attended a physics lecture on dark matter, and it genuinely sparked an interest in a topic she had previously found hideously boring. She now has a PhD and a prestigious career in that field, and it never would have happened without that generalized exposure that universities provide.

That's beautiful and that is precisely what school should be about, K-12 and university. However, at a mass scale, it has been broken for a long time. Sure, there are corner cases, but I think I can say this is the exception rather than the rule.

My own kids have always told me they learn more from me than what their public school education has exposed them to. Having been educated both in and outside the US, I understood precisely what they were telling me. I exposed them to all of the great philosophers, discussions about all religions and open discussions about political thought and history. And I always encouraged them to not take my words (or anyone else's) as ground truth, to think critically, learn and arrive at their own conclusions. And, yes, of course, I also exposed them to STEM subjects not covered in school or before they came up in school. Business and economics were subjects of frequent discussion, because you need this as an 18 year old entering the world. Etc.

In the end, what we choose to teach our children will determine our future. If we put them on the wrong path and don't give them the skills necessary to thrive and be competitive with others, our future will take a turn for the worse. It really is that simple; has been for all of humanity's history. These are important opportunities that should not be wasted.

This is what is sad about what has happened. The people focusing on ideological extremes do damage to society at a large scale, in terms of both time and lives.