Williams Record: Op-Ed

There was an interesting period in the last academic year (2025-26) where nearly every Williams Record op-ed article focused almost nonstop on the developments regarding AI. I had attempted to throw my own hat into the ring for some time, but didn’t settle on a good article idea until after the semester ended, so this article will likely release sometime in the fall, when the Record is open for submissions again.

We Need A Computational Skills Requirement

It’s been said since the early 2000s and the rise of the Internet that we live in an “information age”, a time where unprecedented amounts of data being cheap and easy to share & process is reforming nearly every aspect of our lives. Nearly 30 years later, I think it’s time Williams acknowledges this new world and moves beyond just the QFR for graduation requirements. We live in a world where most every problem can be a big data problem, and thus it’s time to embrace this by adding a new computational skills requirement (call it the CSR).

Some might be quick to denounce this as indistinguishable from the existing QFR; what specifically is meant by computation anyways? Let’s start with the definition: the QFR represents “the ability to apply a formal method to reach conclusions, use numbers comfortably, and employ the research tools necessary to analyze data”. The QFR is important but inadequate for the kinds of skills students need in today’s world. They must go beyond this and understand how to use and adapt the tools that make formal analysis possible on the messy datasets of real life, and there’s still only one way to make that possible: the study of computation.

That does not mean I’m advocating for everyone to be dragged kicking and screaming into a formal CS class; people should leave college understanding the computational tools of their major, and such tools exist for every discipline these days. In fact, some professors have already started building such classes, such as STAT 161, GEOS 290, and PHYS 210. Each department should think carefully about what the technological “tools of the trade” look like for their students and design a course to help ensure their students leave the department already prepared to use them; courses like studying sound design and mixing for music majors, or data mining & corpus analysis for history majors would allow graduates in those fields to leave already prepared for a world where they will use these tools every day.

It is also time that everyone started learning the fundamentals of programming and extending software to fit their own needs. The more you can understand and extend your tools, the more powerful you’ll be; even if students are using tools for generating code, understanding how the tools in their discipline work enables them to explain what it is they actually need and learn for themselves how to go about it. It’s unreasonable to expect everyone to graduate coding like software engineers, but everyone should be able to search and think like one.

Williams has a unique opportunity to be the first in the country to give students greater knowledge and agency over the technology that governs and runs our lives. Centering it in everyone’s education at the College is the first step in ensuring that computation’s power remains democratized, which is how we ensure society rules technology and not vice versa.