On new skillsets

After reading this:

Instead of only teaching journalism as a profession, they should think of journalism as a basic requirement for a good education. It’s a skill they should be teaching everyone who gets a bachelor’s degree, from now on.

I remembered my own thinking about new skillset. While I haven’t gone as far as microjournalism (they did microeconomics too, remember?), I have a couple of my own suggestions.

1. Touch-typing. Seriously, are there any good careers left these days that don’t require a few hours per day in front of the computer? How far can kids go in life without this skill? I know that many of them teach themselves. But they do so with reading and counting too…
2. Introduction to databases. I’m not talking about a full-blown database course, but rather something very simple based on it. Introduction to databases was probably the most important course in my college curriculum. It taught me so much about data and ways of organizing it (tables, keys, normalization). Way too many people learn this things through trial and error method during their whole lifespan. It should be given to them before all the data.
3. Introduction to photography. This one is less important then the above too, but I’d make it the among the first candidates for the first available slot of time. Digital cameras are everyone these days. And most people have absolutely no clue about color theory, composition, etc. Again, I am not talking about something advanced here. Simple things. A bit of colors. The Rule of Thirds. Maybe a Golden Mean. That would improve the content on the web and everwhere else (where else?) as much, if not more, as that microjournalism course.

Which other courses – from the Computer Science department or any other – as an absolute requirement these days?