Universities should require every student to take a variety of courses outside the student's field of study. [Specific Task Instruction: Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.]

Generally speaking, I agree with the claim that a number of courses outside the students’ filed of study should be made compulsory in universities. I think these compulsory additional courses may help students to become more well-educated, as well as to learn their own fields better.
As a commonsense informs us, one of the major purpose of univsersity education is to make graduates “well-educated” and full-developed. To become a real well-educated person, a student must learn a variety of knowledge and have a full understand of our world and our society. That means they should know how to read and write, how to appreciate the beauty of nature and arts, how to communicate with others, and how to make use of their knowledge to help others. All of these are far beyond the reach of simply taking some courses inside a field of study. It is not enough. That’s why in present days more and more universities, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, require their students to take various courses besides the “inside courses”. Some opponents may argue that taking these courses is a waste of time, reducing the students’ time which could be used to deepen their study in their fields. I admit that taking too many such courses may compromise the students’ study on their majors. However, I think a student can and should take a small part of time,—not too much but not too little-for the courses outside his/her major. He doesn’t have to put all his time into his major, nor should we let him: after all, universities should educate its students to be human being, not “human doing” or “”human tools”. Thus, I think the claim is acceptable as long as universties allocate the ratio of these courses reasonably.
Besides, I think the learning of “outside knowledge” also helps students to better understand their own majors. A different course means a brief tour into another field, to understand what other researchers did and how they think about the world. Such an experience could influence a student’s understanding of his own major in some subtle ways.The “outside knowledge” could be sometimes the key to make breakthrough in an insider’s study. For example, Luiz Alvarez, a famous physicist, and his son, a geologist, succeeded to give their contribution into an paleontological riddle: the reason that caused extinction of dinosaurs. Why didn’t some paleontologists make it? The opponents may attribute such an exploration to some “happy accidents”, but we have to admit that the breakthrough of science and technology is, as it has been, usually sparked by these accidents. And the “outside knowledge”, can we here dismiss it as useless? Since students also spend their time on “useless” parties and events, why not ask them to take some of these “useless” courses as well? That’s why I suggest that every student should take a variety of “outside” courses in university. These knowledge, combined with the knowledge from his own field, could be seeds of future discoveries.