A recent report from the Dean of Arts’ Working Group has suggested the removal of the mandatory minor from the current Faculty of Arts program. As it stands now, McGill Arts students are required to have at least one major and one minor. From both personal experience and a simple understanding of the university experience, I think it’s clear that the removal of the mandatory minor would be an excellent move.
After starting my McGill career in the Faculty of Science, I decided to switch into Arts after two years. This meant that I had two years to fit in the majority of an Arts program that most students have four years to do. Luckily I started my major while I was still in Science, but I still needed to make sure I had fulfilled my freshman arts requirements and also all minor requirements. This effectively limited my possible course choices for the latter half of my university career. Luckily, I had some advance credits from high school and I was able to apply some of my science courses to my freshmen requirements, but I was still stuck in a tricky situation of having to fulfill a minor, which I did not necessarily think was a great way to spend my time.
It should be made clear that this act would only remove the requirement of the minor. Of course, students would still be free to pursue one or more minors. Many of the arguments that could be made in favour of minors are compelling, but few offer strong evidence that a minor should be required of students. Requiring students to minor in another discipline can come close to hard paternalism with McGill telling students they know what is best for them. However, as an 18-22 year old, I feel confident in my abilities to decide what I ought to be studying. If you disagree with this, then I think you would also be forced to argue that McGill should also be telling me in which program I should be majoring, which seems like a bad idea.
Another argument could be made that requiring a minor forces students to expand their studies beyond just their major and learn more about other topics. However, I think requiring a minor actually limits students abilities to expand their study into other programs. Not only do many students feel compelled to stay within their field of study, or something related to it, but they are also forced to fulfill the minor requirements. Now, it could actually be said that forcing a minor is actually good because allowing students to take too many different classes limits their ability to learn something more in-depth and could lead to students missing out on interesting learning opportunities at higher-level classes. There are a few problems with this. First, six classes isn’t really that many. It’s quite easy to take six classes in something and not get so deep into the field. Also, the student should be able to choose whether or not they want to specialize in a few things, or spend their university life tasting as many different parts of academia as possible. You might think this is a waste of their time, but students should be able to decide this for themselves and they are still taking a major, which will be way more in depth than any minor could ever hope to be.
