In universities' FLE departments, literature courses should be compulsory as they are very important for students. FLE department students will be teachers in the near future, and as it is taught in educational sciences lessons, one of the most critical features of effective teachers is general culture which is mostly provided by literature. Literature is not about only reading a poem or a novel and make comments about them or memorizing some poets or authors, their birthdays or their lives... It's about understanding what they are saying and using them in our lives, it's about having different points of view and widening our horizons. So we can not do this by reading on our own as some people suggest.
Those people who doesn't want to take these lessons also say that they don't like these lessons, they find them boring and hard.. I think this idea is nonsense as nobody told them that university will always be enjoyable and easy. Everything has a price and if we want something, we should pay for it just like we have to endure these difficulties and work hard if we want to be successful as teachers.