I look at any general educational experience as a multi-tiered experience. It is important to expose new students to the wide variety of possibilities, if only minimally. Then the students themselves can better target and move towards the areas they find intriguing and exciting. As a basic core, any student under the "graphic design" umbrella should be exposed to the basics of web design, print design, video/multimedia/game design, and marketing. I feel it is most likely these areas which will inspire and help students realize their own strengths and weaknesses. Nothing gets more basic for web design than HMTL/CSS. That's the foundation all web design is built upon, much the same way all print design is built upon CMYK/Spot color separations. If a student then wants to focus more on web design, they should be able to seek courses teaching advanced CSS or jQuery/javascript. Just as if they wanted to focus on the marketing side they could seek courses in demographic studies and statistical analysis. Make no mistake a "Graphic Designer" with strong web skills is just as valuable as a "Graphic Designer" with strong marketing skills. However, in my experience, when the Human Resources department places an advertisement for a "Graphic Designer" they are seeking someone knowledgable in either print or web design and most often both to some degree.
