Are interdisciplinary majors "useless"?

<p>Useless in the sense that it wont get you a job. I am interested in applying to Berkeley as a Political Economy major. Are interdisciplinary majors really seen as "jack of all trades, master of none" by the job market?</p>

<p>All humanities majors, psychology, sociology, political science, among a multitude of unfortunate others are considered pretty useless by the job market.</p>

<p>I don’t think employers see it as “Jack of all trades, master of none”. It’s more of a “Expert of few, and the few are mostly useless”. </p>

<p>And it’s kind of right. Sure, you might “gain” better writing skills and critical thinking skills, but other, more technical majors will also give you critical thinking skills as well. And if you can’t right well by time you’re in college, I’m going to have to say you’re probably not going to magically improve once you’re in.</p>

<p>I was very interested in studying English (it’ll likely be my minor, or even a double major if I’m dedicated enough), but I just couldn’t sit right with knowing I’ll be short-changing my future family based on something I enjoy, rather than something that will make me a potential job candidate.</p>

<p>Just some things to think about. Does your school offer a regular economics degree?</p>

<p>UCB does but I cant get in. I am entering next semester and I dont have the pre-requisites done from my JC. Because econ is an impacted course, they only allow you to apply for the economics major in your first semester at UCB.</p>

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<p>Oh, the irony.</p>

<p>Political science majors aren’t “useless” at all. The average high school graduate makes 25 grand a year. The average Political Science major makes $59,000. Are you going to have fantastic job prospects compared with engineering? Of course not. But you should major in what you enjoy. There is a LOT more value in actually enjoying your work than making all kinds of money but dreading going to work.</p>

<p>I say no.</p>

<p>My eldest sister majored in English and Math. She’s currently producing film after being involved in the corporate world.</p>

<p>Third oldest sister practically made up her own major and is now a working actress. Graduated with no debt. She’s currently making more than my brother who’s in finance. </p>

<p>Older brother majored in Sociology & Philosophy who later joined the Peace Corps. He decided to enter academics and is now a married college professor. He and his partner are expecting twins this upcoming August.</p>

<p>Reasons for their success (especially the eldest sister and older brother): they took their major(s) seriously. Unique summer internships and research during undergraduate years which brought forth strong references. Basically, they knew how to exploit their opportunities and connect with people who wanted them to succeed. </p>

<p>All said siblings are better writers than me. There’s no hiding that fact. What they can express on paper is what I can only dream of doing one day. </p>

<p>For me? I’m majoring in Agricultural & Biological Engineering. Why? It’s what I enjoy and I’m very good at it.</p>

<p>warning: long post, as I’m rather passionate about interdisciplinary study and its legitimacy.</p>

<p>First off, I don’t think any major is ‘useless,’ because they will provide you with the skills to contribute something worthwhile to the economy - that’s why what you major in is largely irrelevant to most jobs (except technical ones), since college degrees act more as a gatekeeper for the people who are capable of doing more complex jobs.</p>

<p>That said, if by “useful” you mean “employable” and “high-paying,” interdisciplinary majors that are technical are by no means “useless.” The reason that interdisciplinary programs were established in the first place is to fight the age-old prevailing notion that progress is made within a discipline, but it turns out that the greatest questions and problems in a discipline can often be best solved by drawing on other fields, which also happen to be working on a related part of the problem. A perfect example is cognitive science: in trying to understand how the mind works, computer science gives you the algorithmic foundations (the cognitive assumption being that the human mind can be modeled on algorithms), while linguistics offers a task to apply the algorithms to and offers a more concrete basis of the human mind (cogsci assumes that language is an accurate, concrete reflection of the workings of the human mind), neuroscience and psychology offer a greater understanding of how the mind itself works so that it can be modeled, and math (including logic and statistics) offers tools for formalizing the cognitive processes. All these areas are important in achieving artificial intelligence.</p>

<p>So not only does each give you knowledge that will help in solving the problem, but each will give you skills to find disparate connections among various topics in the hopes of finding the right answer. In that sense, interdisciplinary majors - though not all of them - make you even more employable.</p>

<p>There’s a greater emphasis at all the top universities on interdisciplinary study - Stanford especially prides itself on that, as do Penn and MIT. Harvard is making significant pushes toward it as well. I’m sure I’m forgetting others, but I can say that it’s a nationwide (even worldwide) trend.</p>

<p>In the end, the difference between “disciplinary” and “interdisciplinary” is how established the study itself is. Since new knowledge - and new disciplines - are always grounded on previous knowledge, it makes sense that an interdisciplinary field will build on several different areas as stepping stones. Once that interdisciplinary field becomes common enough and is cemented in universities’ academic offerings, it’s no longer considered interdisciplinary: it’s a discipline in itself. Linguistics used to draw on philology, history, philosophy, and anthropology, but with time grew its own two legs and is now a full-fledged field in its own right. But you can see how it’s still in a transition in academia, since some universities have a designated linguistics department, while others still relegate it to anthropology (most universities) or philosophy (MIT). In some cases, it’s subsumed under cognitive science (JHU) - perhaps an even more progressive strategy in interdisciplinary education, where the interdisciplinary field itself becomes the “mother” and the disciplines it came from the “children,” rather than the interdisciplinary field being a more “fringe” study independent of its constituent fields.</p>

<p>So basically, most disciplines today were once interdisciplinary, before they caught on, got institutional support, received grants from government and industry (money talks). It reminds me of a quote about the difference between a language and a dialect: “A language is a dialect with an army and navy.” Legitimacy (and in turn independence and dominance) is all about politics. Other examples of transformations in study are numerous: physics grew out of math and observations about the physical world; math grew out of geometry and observations about shapes and relations in the world. All knowledge that’s organized into disciplines now grew slowly from previous knowledge/disciplines.</p>

<p>I’ll add that some interdisciplinary programs, if not most, have had an uphill battle against the departments that don’t see this new study as legitimate, at best, or think that the establishment of the new program will “dilute” the perceived legitimacy of their own discipline. For example, cognitive science (which I know the most about) had difficulty largely from computer science departments, who didn’t want to harm their legitimacy by combining it with the more “fuzzy” fields like linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. This was somewhat legitimate, of course, in the 80s and 90s, when many CS departments had barely escaped the clutches of “applied mathematics” programs. So their objection was basically, “We just established our own legitimacy as an independent discipline separate from applied mathematics, we can’t afford to harm our legitimacy by mixing with that riff-raff known as the social sciences and humanities.” [Just a note: CS is still technically applied math, though politics has led them to be implemented institutionally as a separate field, and legitimately so.] </p>

<p>Within the past decade, though, their attitude has changed, for a few reasons: the explosion of personal computers and the widespread impact that more powerful computers have had on the world means that their legitimacy will never be in question. And they’re more willing to do interdisciplinary endeavors since computational methods have proven to be useful in a variety of fields (all STEM fields use them now, and there’s a recent trend in applying computational methods even to humanities and the analysis of literature). </p>

<p>But for an example, back in the 80s at Stanford, when the departments of linguistics, psychology, and philosophy were attempting to get computer science - the most important one - to join in an interdisciplinary program like cognitive science, CS was very, very resistant, to the point that the effort was almost extinguished. But they pushed hard, and it happened. Now, 20 years later, not only is that interdisciplinary program the most-established and respected interdisciplinary program on campus (called a “model for all interdisciplinary programs”), the CS department itself recently did an entire overhaul of its undergraduate curriculum, requiring students to do a common CS core and then to require them to concentrate in a specific track, many of which are interdisciplinary: from biology to linguistics. Funnily enough, they modeled those tracks after the cognitive science program (which always required a common core supplemented with required concentrations in other disciplines).</p>

<p>Now, it’s not just interdisciplinary majors with a technical bent that can be beneficial. I’m not 100% sure what political economy is, but it seems like it would be very useful given that there is heavy overlap between economics, political science, and international relations. Each informs the others greatly, as they’re intimately connected. I think that kind of major would be very employable (“useful”).</p>

<p>Here’s an interesting post on why cognitive science (“symbolic systems” at Stanford) majors are very employable and in fact have the second-highest average starting salary, behind CS:</p>

<p>[Symbolic</a> Systems ssp-description/expl3.html](<a href=“Symbolic Systems Program”>Symbolic Systems Program)</p>

<p>Specifically:</p>

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<p>In your case I think the combination of more technical (economics) training with ‘softer’ emphasis (poli sci, IR) would be very worthwhile, not just for the intellectual benefit, but for the employable benefit as well.</p>

<p>Thank you phantasmagoric, I really appreciate it. That was very informative and well put.</p>

<p>First off I realize this post is pretty old; I just stumbled upon it while doing some research so I don’t know if anyone will see this post but I would feel remiss not to respond to phantasmagoric’s well thought out and laid out argument for the credibility of IDS degrees. I must say however as a recipient of an Interdisciplinary studies degree from a top state school, that I disagree with your argument, which is in its essence just a long unattributed paraphrase of Julie Klein’s definition of interdisciplinary studies in her book Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice. While I am sure you just forgot to attribute your source or maybe felt that you had changed the wording enough, your argument is not your own… And in response to your (Klein’s) argument I have to say that the benefit of an IDS degree is largely one sided as in the benefits tend to be personal rather than professional. Just because you create new information in a discipline through a creative interdisciplinary approach there is generally a hesitation in the professional marketplace to receive that information, for it is untested and an unknown commodity. Unless you are planning to use your IDS degree for research or unless you know EXACTLY how you will use it and have a job lined up where you know it will give you an edge I would strongly recommend sticking with a more established degree.</p>

<p>jbrown0303;
Thanks for the post. I am struggling with a few things right now in regards to truly understanding the interdisciplinary studies vs general. I have found a school that has a degree program; however, it is a BS in Interdisciplinary Studies in Environmental Mangagement of Agriculture and Natural Resources. With the courses that make up this degree program, I feel as though I could use this towards job placement within a DNREC style position. It involves studies of soil, water, pollution… Someone said IDS was not a good route although I feel this is a great degree program. Can you shed some light to help me see the pro’s and con’s?</p>