I had none of those required courses in high school aside from one PE course. In grades 7 and 8 we had combined shop and home economics courses (in each year) w

I had none of those required courses in high school aside from one PE course. In grades 7 and 8 we had combined shop and home economics courses (in each year) which I thought was a good idea since everybody learnt to cook, sew, and do some basic carpentry. I saw so many people who couldn't cook at university. That would have been different if people learnt to cook in school. This was at the university level. The problem is that my engineering department has a hard time fitting in courses. If you need an additional CS course that's one course covering something else that doesn't get included. We already merged our separate probability and statistics courses into a single course to make room for more intro materials. For accreditation, all of our courses are broken down into having some of: Math, Intro Science, Engineering Science, and Engineering Design (and possibly none of these). You need a set amount in each category to get accreditation. Other departments have the same requirements, but their programs are designed to meet it. My department lets the student decide most of their upper year courses from across the university. So, if you decide to take a bunch of CS courses, you'll miss out and need to make it up on other courses. By the end, you need more Engineering Science and Engineering Design which isn't hard to do if you have mostly engineering courses, but pure CS courses basically give you nothing on these. Until you actually participate in these kinds of discussions you don't know how carefully the overall curriculum is planned. Students going through my program have had a number of excellent suggestions, but it's hard to make changes and still meet all the requirements. My department used to have more courses per term. Originally, there was 7 a term (I think), then there were 6. They've since moved to 5. That means you get 40 courses instead of 48 or 56.