When I was navigating the majors fair this past Wednesday I was very impressed by the sheer breadth of majors that our university offers across many fields and disciplines. It truly is encouraging to know that I have the option to make many different areas my main focus during my time here. What was discouraging however was the “no” I received when I would walk up to many tables and ask if they offered a certificate in their department.
While I understand that it would be logistically difficult for every major to have a corresponding minor, the fact that there are around 160 majors available at UW Madison and only about 50 minors is concerning to me.
The reason for my concern over this is because one of the main goals of our university, as well as most universities, is to allow students to pursue many academic interests while focusing on a few. The problem is that the way our school’s current certificate structure is set up, there is not a lot of incentive to explore earning a certificate.
For example, say I have two majors but I would love to be fluent or at least be able to communicate in Spanish, Arabic or Chinese, the three most spoken languages in the world. None of those language departments offer a certificate, only a major. Because of this, there is little incentive to stretch my schedule aside to accommodate that interest from filling out my general education requirement and credits to graduate. Under the current set up, when I actually create my resume for employers, I will not have anything solid to prove I can communicate in those languages.
More importantly, while it could be implausible, the idea of being able to get a certificate in any field in my school of choice is one that I believe should happen. If our university truly is convinced that a diversified education is the way to go, then it should provide its students the incentive to actually follow their interests. This is opposed to the current set-up in which we are required to simply check off general education requirements, which encourages students to simply look for easy classes outside of their main interests so that their GPA does not take a hit.
Finally, despite the argument of this article, I do encourage students who are not sure of what to take outside of classes for their major to look into the current certificates available at the university. Some of them are conventional in that they are light versions of the major, however there are a significant amount that involve interesting seminars for the minor as well as capstones that only exist for the minor as well. While, the current resources available for us to do this are limited, we should all still try to broaden our horizons with the diverse education available to us at our renowned university.
Henry is a freshman columnist for The Daily Cardinal. Do you think that our university needs to improve the number of certificates offered? Would expanding our certificate oppurtunities improve our community and help our graduates more in the workplace? Tell us how you feel and please send all of your feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
