<p>I have recently been giving some thought to graduate school. Im on pace to graduate with a BA in Economics, and a minor in Journalism, but I am hesitant to commit to a graduate field. I want to stick with the social sciences but was curious if an Interdisciplinary Masters would be respectable? Say one with concentrations in Political Science, Economics, and Sociology?. Anybody know if that would be employable, more specifically if it would bring more opportunities than just my BA. I'm leaning towards a Political Science Masters right now. Thanks in advance. </p>
<p>So first things first. Graduate school isn’t really a ‘logical next step’ like college often is after high school. It’s completely optional. You don’t need to do a graduate degree. The corollary to that is that graduate school is largely a means to an end. You get a graduate degree because you need one to do a specific type of job or set of jobs; you ideally don’t get the degree and then try to shoehorn it into something. So if you cannot decide what kind of degree you want, then that probably means that you don’t need to go to grad school - at least not yet. It might be worthwhile to work for a few years and then decide later, after you have a better idea of what you want to do and what kind of degree you need to do that thing.</p>
<p>With that said…interdisciplinary master’s can be respectable, but it depends on what is meant by “interdisciplinary” and where you go. For example, public policy or public health master’s degrees are both interdisciplinary, but both also standard degrees within their fields. But those liberal studies MAs where you can take classes in 2-3 different fields without a whole lot of structure…while I’m sure they’re really interesting and amazing, I get the feeling that they are primarily designed to prepare students for doctoral work rather than the workforce.</p>
<p>The thing to do would be to identify specific interdisciplinary MAs at specific universities that appeal to you, and then do some reconnaissance. Contact the program and ask for placement data - how many people are employed within 3 months of graduation, and what kinds of jobs are they doing? What is the career services office like at the school, and what recruiters come to hire their graduates? Is the program a rigorous, well-structured program (which is what you want) or is it kind of loosy do whatever you want (which you don’t want for a professional program, although that might be great prep for a PhD program because the flexibility allows you to specialize as you want).</p>