Can't Pick a College Major? Create One- WSJ

College Majors
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<p>Can't</a> Pick a College Major? Create One - WSJ.com</p>

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More than 900 four-year colleges and universities allow students to develop their own programs of study with an adviser's help, up 5.1% from five years ago, based on data from the College Board, a New York-based nonprofit organization of colleges and universities. University officials say at least 70 go a step further, providing programs with faculty advisers, and sometimes specialized courses, to help students develop educational plans tailored to their interests, while still meeting school standards. </p>

<p>The programs can spark students' enthusiasm for learning and sometimes equip them for complicated, cross-disciplinary jobs or emerging career fields. But parents are often wary, fearing their kids will drift too far from training for a real, paying job. Some employers look askance at do-it-yourself majors, too, saying their novelty leaves room for confusion about what, exactly, the grads can do. </p>

<p>Students also know many mainstream majors aren't much help finding a job. Some 27% of workers who graduated from college 10 or more years ago still haven't found a job related to their college major; 12% said it took five years or more to find a job in their field, and 21% said it took three years, says a recent survey of 2,042 college-educated workers by CareerBuilder, a Chicago-based job-search website.
Fields of Study</p>

<p>A sampling of some students' D-I-Y majors</p>

<pre><code>* Ethnobotany
* Magic
* Ethology (animal psychology and behavior)
* Music promotion
* Anthropology of mental health and illness
* Peace and conflict resolution
* Historical clothing
* Sociology of fashion
* Environmental racism
* Complex organizations and informational systems
* Neuroscience, human behavior and society
* Asian-American studies
* Bioethics in crosscultural perspectives
</code></pre>

<p>Anya Kamenetz, author of "DIY U," a new book critical of higher education, says that while creating your own major doesn't solve other big problems at colleges and universities, such as high costs, "it does introduce the idea that students should be in charge of designing their own learning plans." </p>

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<p>a major in MAGIC? ridiculous. </p>

<p>on the other hand, the engineering school at my school lets you do a “design your engineering major” thing that graduates you with an interdisciplinary B.S. in Engineering. You still have to fulfill the lower division physical sciences/engineering requirements and take about 20 design credits but you can pick upper level electives from hard science or engineering as you see fit.</p>

<p>i kinda wish I did that actually. the program can set you up to become either a generalist that knows alot of science in all aspects and prepare you for graduate school, or a specialist expert in 1 field not covered by any 1 field of science or engineering, like nuclear chemistry, industrial automation, biochemical engineering, scientific instrumentation or nanotech.</p>

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<p>My college is very well known for offering this option. In fact when it first started all the majors were designed by the students. In the past couple of years people have majored in Wildlife Illustration, Gerontology, Freedom & Constraint, People and their Art… Some really random stuff.</p>

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<p>Do they only let you build your own liberal arts majors, or do they let you design your own engineering/science major too?</p>