I wish more programmers took a few writing classes so they would appreciate how to write an email with the correct punctuation. I've seen far too many emails where the author didn't appear to understand how to formulate a complete sentence or understand where to put a paragraph break.

I wish more freelancers took a class in business accounting so they'd have an idea of how to do it and what a good (or bad) contract looks like... or understand the value of their time. There are far too many that decide to become "freelancers" and yet have no idea on how to do the basic business items that come with being a freelancer.

I wish more programmers took a class that had a public speaking component. Reading powerpoint slides as a team presentation is boring. The work environment isn't just "I write code" but also a transferring of knowledge from one person to the rest of the team.

I wish more programmers took some classes in history, or physical sciences - things outside the major. I've had more than a water cooler conversations where a person doesn't understand how the length of the day impacts the temperature, or is surprised at the similarity of events today and those of thirty some-odd years ago. This concerns me, not for the skills of work, but rather the understanding of the world outside of the office.

To these things, English composition, human communication, contemporary economy, arts and culture, political science and history... oh, those are are excellent class titles to help fill out those I wish items.

I wish people would understand those things can be picked up before a degree or outside of a degree.

Going to a university in the UK I was free to study the subject I was interested in and wanted to understand. I was able to fully immerse.

My schooling prepared me for the rest.

I have a BSc in Computer Science. I managed almost completely avoid taking any papers outside of the science and engineering departments. The only non STEM paper I took was a commerce paper about eCommerce.

Looking back now, I actually regret only doing STEM papers. I got stuck in a bubble of dealing with the same people (or the same types of people) in all my classes, and really got no breadth to my degree.

I'm not saying that people should be forced to take arts papers for a science degree, but in retrospect I think that I should've taken some.

English (and NZ and Aussie) universities have 3 year courses because high school kids pass minimum national requirements exams before they enter, US high school graduation is not uniform across the country, or even across states - in essence those minimum requirements ensure that students entering Uni have already met what in the US would be the General Education requirement

That's not whey they have 3 year vs 4 year courses. The 3 year vs 4 year debate is a legacy of philosophical differences about what qualifies a liberal education that are far older than standardized national secondary curricula.

Universities in the US have entrance requirements for classes completed in high school. They do the same thing English universities do when admiring American students--they require specific general education classes were completed in high school.

Because of this even though the US doesn't have national standards, virtually ever university bound student will have already completed the same general education classes that students from countries with 3 year universities would have. Universities her don't force students to take English, math, and history classes because some substantial population of college bound high school students haven't taken them.

well yeah, they let people test out if they meet already can meet the requirement

CLEP tests may be the answer. At many schools, you can get out of many liberal arts classes if you can pass a two-hour test on the topic. You get college credit as if from the class, too. And the tests are far cheaper than the classes.