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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I was a professor in a STEM field and I remember once when I taught a kind of Gen Ed class in the field, one of the students was a history major. This student's writing ability blew me away compared to most of the typical kids in the STEM classes. I do think there is a place for the skills that are developed by the humanities majors. [/quote]

This makes me giggle because my husband (who barely graduated HS, joined the military, then did an EE degree PT as a working adult) had me help him with some of his papers while he was at Mason. Many of them were group projects. Those kids were TERRIBLE writers.(Many of them were TJ alums, too-Just throwing it out there) My husband freely admits that writing was never his strong point, whereas my liberal arts degree involved LOTS of writing. I was the annoying person who wrote all my papers the night before and still got decent grades.

Of course, my husband makes 3X what I do because he has a STEM degree. Writing isn't necessarily needed for that degree.[/quote]

So again it's another proof that good writing skill is much less of a value to the market and society.[/quote]
fun experiment, put the average Physics or Chemical Engineering major in an English major course and the average English major in a 300 level physics class or ochem. Who do you think drops out after the second week? [/quote]

That's simple---most STEM students are overall good students, they know how to write and communicate.  It's just given the preference many of them would rather take OChem than a Shakespeare literature course. But that doesn't mean that they couldn't handle the course and still get at least a B/C.

Not to say English majors are not smart, but you simply cannot drop into an advanced Physics or advanced chem course if you have not studied the lower level courses. 
[/quote]

I think if you talk to college professors they may have a different opinion.  I know several that have complained about STEM Majors’ writing skills. [/quote]

They may not write as well as an English major, but all of my stem friends did quite well in their "core curriculum"/ English courses in college.  A's were not handed out like candy where I went.  And majority of us got As in the writing classes, and continued to develop our skills in our Stem courses.  Today, most good universities have several writing courses stem students must take.  My own kid will need to take 3, one being an intensive writing course all freshman take (and AP cannot exempt you) and the other 2 being specific to their major, so STEM focused vs writing about Shakespeare.  [/quote]

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