Journalism/PoliSci/Russian

College Majors
1

<p>I am thinking of majoring in a combination of two of the following: Journalism, Political Science, and Russian. I have read that students who concentrate on foreign languages have better chances of getting jobs because of globalization, but I also think that if I majored in Political Science and also took some journalism classes, that I could get a job in political news media, since that field seems to be growing lately. What would you do in my situation? I'm willing to take any well-reasoned suggestion into consideration.</p>

<p>Edit: The reason I specifically would choose Russian is that I already have three high school semesters of Russian finished and my teacher (a native speaker of Russian) told me that I am one of the best students she has had, so I feel that I have some potential to be very fluent in the language after a few more years of instruction.</p>

2

<p>That’s a good combination. Some comments, ideas, and suggestions to consider:</p>

<p>I think just taking a few courses in journalism will be insufficient to result in employment in that competitive field, however, and I don’t think you can squeeze enough into a journalism minor to get adequate training. So, you’re better off getting an undergrad major in it (or a master’s in it). </p>

<p>Instead of a Political Science major, I would suggest doing a program in Russian & East European Studies. Combine this with a journalism major.</p>

<p>Russian & East European Studies is an interdisciplinary program that will require Russia-focused courses chosen from several departments, e.g., history, political science, economics, etc. in addition to Russian language courses. Russian & East European Studies may be offered as a separate major, a minor, or as a certificate program. Sometimes, it is offered as a track for majors within a Russian or Slavic Languages dept. </p>

<p>If you do a Russian & East European Studies program, some programs may only require the equivalent of 4 semesters of Russian. You should try to take the equivalent of at least 4 years, including a study abroad program in Russia (for a year if you can). </p>

<p>Since you seem to be good with languages and you’re already studying Russian, you might be able to study an additional language, too. This could be German (spoken widely in E. Europe), another Slavic language or non-Slavic East European language, or a Central Asian language, such as Turkish or Uzbek. (You might be able to study German or another Slavic language on your own, of course. For other languages, there usually are summer intensive language institutes at several universities, for which funding is available.)</p>

<p>This would require some good planning to fit all of this in.</p>

<p>Finally, I’d strongly recommend looking into the Russian Language Flagship programs. This is a Federally-funded program at selected universities in critical languages, designed to bring participants to a high level of proficiency. Portland State and UCLA have one, and Wisconsin recently started one. Usually, you combine this program with another major.
Here’s a link: [The</a> Language Flagship - Russian](<a href=“http://www.thelanguageflagship.org/russian]The”>http://www.thelanguageflagship.org/russian)</p>