[tzs]

Do CS students not already take social sciences classes as part of the general degree requirements at their university?

At MIT, every undergraduate is required to eight courses in arts, humanities, or social sciences. That works out to taking one arts, humanities, or social science class per semester. Specifically, you have to take one from art, one from humanities, and one from social science. You also have to pick a particular field and take a series of courses in that field.

Caltech is similar, but not quite as structure. Every undergraduate must take 36 units of humanities (Caltech has a different unit scale than most others--one term of most classes earns you 9 units, and there are 3 terms per academic year) , 36 units of social science, and 36 units of humanities or social sciences.

For someone who took the minimum number of units possible to get a CS degree at Caltech, 22% of their coursework would be in humanities or social sciences. 20% for someone who took the average CS course load.

I'd just assumed that it was like that at most other schools too.