Universities are big. When it comes to changing the curriculum, it can take a very long time for all of the different people involved to approve changes. In the world of technology though, the skills we need to learn to prepare us for our careers change rapidly. In order to keep up with the changes in our career fields, the university needs to find a way to change the curriculum to keep up.

Earlier in the semester, one of my professors told the class that HTML coding is the new Microsoft Word of the workplace and that we wouldn’t be able to get a job without it. Now as a senior in my final semester who has not learned that skill yet, I was troubled to hear we would not be covering it in any of our classes.

If coding is going to be important in the workplace, and the professors are aware of this, why is it that we won’t be learning it before graduation?

After spending tons of money and digging ourselves into debt, it is disheartening to know that we still won’t be prepared for the real world. If coding has slipped through as something we should have learned but haven’t, I imagine other things are slipping through the cracks.

The university should set up a system that is more adaptable to an ever-changing workplace. Maybe all majors should have a class titled “new technologies” in which the curriculum changes every year to adapt to the newest demands of our career fields. Our capstone classes might be a great setting for this sort of curriculum.

The system of creating a single curriculum that will include everything that we need to know for our careers is no longer viable. Universities need to update the way they form our curriculum. The curriculum need to be adaptable and they need to be crafted with input from employers.

While many faculty have spent time working in the industry, many of them have not done so within the last year. Being that employers will know what skills they want recent-grads to have, their input would help mold a productive curriculum.

Many of the classes that we take give us interesting background, and a liberal arts education is extremely valuable. But if our background classes like our general education courses get in the way of us learning all of the skills we need for the workplace, then our money was not well spent.

The curriculum needs to be redesigned so that it can be more easily redesigned. As the demands of the workplace change, the curriculum needs to change too. If the curriculum doesn’t include the skills we need for our careers, we are wasting our money.