A couple hundred years ago, I served in the curriculum committee of a university department. There was a definite split in the members' thinking about "elective" courses. One group though them important for freshmen and sophomores, to allow those persons who had not yet settled on a major to explore a wide variety of areas, in order to settle on the one to which they would devote themselves entirely in their junior and senior years. Another group, to which I belonged, thought that too much of the four years of undergraduate education was consumed by requirements for graduation in a particular major, that it was most important to turn out graduates with well-rounded educations, and that electives were what prevented the entire four-year path to a bachelors degree from being a sort of ivy-covered trade school.

The quite wonderful thing about elective courses is that the students who choose them tend to be highly motivated by the interest which led them to select the particular course. Subtract that interest from the process and one is left with compulsory attendance in courses which someone else thinks to be "good for you."

While my undergraduate major had nothing to do with any of the following courses, they were of great value to me: agricultural economics, medical bacteriology, printing technology and anthropological linguistics. Surely no one would have been wise enough to select these courses for me ... and no one ought.