Hello!
I am a high school junior interested in a multitude of humanities majors, including anthropology, classics, economics, history, philosophy, and political science. The interdisciplinary majors offered by several prestigious liberal arts colleges (Williams College’s political economy major and Pomona’s Politics, Philosophy, and Economics major, among others) have caught my attention. Has anyone studied a similar major at a small college (or any top-tier institution)? And can you get the benefits of each of the combined subjects without sacrificing too much specialization?
Thanks!
Well, the answer to your last question is no. By the very nature of an interdisciplinary program, you have to sacrifice some of the depth in the individual fields to get more breadth in the same number of credits. HOWEVER, the trade-off is that you get some depth/specialization into a particular type or area of those fields - namely, the point/intersection of the two.
Political economy is a real subfield within political science, so I wouldn’t worry about that too much. PPE at Pomona looks to be relatively similar, with the notable exception that you also use the lens of philosophy to engage critically with economics and political science. A PPE major, according to Pomona, “learns to combine knowledge of current economic and political institutions and their histories with a broader vision of the goals and purposes of human society.” It’s like the uber-social science major, if you will.
A well-done interdisciplinary major is not like a taste of each. Instead, it’s a relatively in-depth look at a particular intersection of two or more disciplines. Both of these programs do look like they’re done that way - the political economy major is not just a little bit of economics and a little bit of political science, but an in-depth study of how economics and politics interact and produce/affect/are affected by social phenomena and each other. Likewise, the PPE program seems to be a more deep look at the interface between economics and political science through the lens of philosophy and social thought.