Or perhaps their courses wouldn't benefit from a modular approach. A whole lot of STEM builds upon foundations, plenty of which are built up as a course runs.

Or perhaps their courses wouldn't benefit from a modular approach. A whole lot of STEM builds upon foundations, plenty of which are built up as a course runs. There's also stuff in many courses for which the long term motivation is not clear, and might not even be clear if an attempt at explanation was made. Once you get past certain points I can think of various fields where modularity might work. Math, e.g. when you have to learn a particular thing to attack another subject. Engineering where, after the initial principles, there are various applications. Biology, a wild, wild world which after getting a very solid foundation I study in a "just in time" manner because it's changing so quickly and it's not my field.