Interdisciplinary Masters Program?

<p>Hello everyone,</p>

<p>I come to you all looking for a bit of advice as I begin my investigation into Masters programs.</p>

<p>I graduated about 2 years ago from Hampshire College, an interdisciplinary school that offers a BA in a concentration, rather than a major. My concentration can best be described as "Consumer Behavior", wherein I combined sociology and (to a lesser extent) psychology with business. Hampshire College is not a traditional college and sets itself up to be like a Masters program and allows its students to design and complete their own curriculum with an emphasis on interdisciplinarity. This worked very well for me, and I was hoping to continue this method in my Masters work.</p>

<p>I've begun looking into Masters programs that would either A.) Allow me to concentrate specifically in Consumer Behavior or, B.) Allow me to develop my own degree, which would give me the opportunity to develop my degree as I see fit. I am aware that there are a few programs in the US that would allow me to do the former, such as Purdue, or get a closely related marketing degree, such as at Kellog. My concern however, is the lack of interdisciplinarity; they tend to be too focused, which I feel is a bit constricting. As such, I've begun looking at alternative programs, such as Skidmore's MALS program or Harvard's Extension School. I have, however, heard mixed reviews on such programs, ranging from "Completely valid and well-regarded" to "Not worth the paper the degree is printed on".</p>

<p>Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of well-regarded interdisciplinary masters programs? Or is my best bet to follow a traditional route and go to a Marketing program? My goal is to acquire a PhD, and thus to further my education rather than immediately go into the work force.</p>

<p>Cheers, and thank you so much for reading!</p>

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<p>If this is your planned route, you need to avoid “interdisciplinary” degrees like the plague, because those degrees, rightly or wrongly, don’t get looked at very well in the academic hiring process.</p>

<p>I think you misunderstand master’s programs; most of them are actually far more similar to undergrad degrees than the model at Hampshire. There are required core courses, and some distributional requirements with some flexibility, and then electives. There aren’t many programs that just allow you to take whatever you want, because they want you to develop breadth and depth and most students aren’t good at doing that on their own.</p>

<p>If you are interested in consumer behavior there are a wide range of things you can do.</p>

<p>-An MS, and then PhD, in industrial-organizational psychology.
-A PhD in marketing, management, or another business field.
-A PhD in social psychology somewhere there are professors doing research on things that are important to business.
-A PhD in sociology where there are professors doing research on such things.</p>

<p>PhDs are generally not “too constricting”. There’s usually core work because you need to have a theoretical core on which to build the foundation of your research - every field has core tenets. You will be a stronger scholar with them. But the vast majority of PhD programs allow you to do work across two or more disciplines quite easily, just by investigating them on your own. For one example, the psychology department here at Columbia only has three required core courses in the PhD. The rest of the courses you design with your advisor. I’m doing mine with public health, and we have other students who do theirs jointly with business and with political science, and who do research in those departments.</p>

<p>The most useless thing you can do is get some kind of master’s in liberal arts. They’re far too broad, and they don’t give you the foundation of knowledge that you need. Furthermore, disciplinary PhD programs want to hire disciplinary scholars. For example, a sociology PhD with the right kind of preparation can get a job in a sociology department - or a women’s studies department, an American studies department, a public health school, a business school, a school of social work, etc. Someone with a women’s studies degree, though, is much more narrowly prepared and are mostly competitive at other women’s studies departments and perhaps a few other interdisciplinary departments. But since there are far more disciplinary departments than interdisciplinary ones, you up your chances of academic work by a lot if you have a degree in a traditional discipline.</p>