Yes, you too can have a degree in anything you want! Enjoy music, political science and yoga? How about math, Shakespeare and welding? Change your major too many times? Have we got the ticket out for you! Get a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. Come up with your own study plan – have a couple of your favorite profs sign off on it and you’re on your way! It sounds cooler than a General Studies degree too.
PLUS, if you still can’t get a job when your done, you can always go back and get a GRADUATE degree in interdisciplinary studies! Woo hoo! Add some French and a thesis on the intersection of the Beatles White Album with Finnegan’s Wake. Cool! Now that you’re $100k in debt, you’re sure to find that dream job.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m actually ALL FOR interdisciplinary studies. I think nearly all of the most interesting scholarship AND productive work out there intersects many disciplines.
Can you write a killer application with only raw computer science chops? No. Creative graphic design powers? No. A deep understanding of user interfaces and lots of intuitive empathy? No. You need all three! Yes, you can have a team of people working on a project, one of each, but the really genius folks have all three working together in their own heads. You won’t learn this stuff in school either, though school will help parts of it.
I like reading Girard and he dabbles in philosophy, anthropology, psychology, literary criticism, theology, and more to come up with some truly original ideas.
The problem with our kings and politicians today is that they are hyper-specialists in getting elected with (occasionally) some background in law. This is not a good mix for actual creative problem solving.
It’s well-known that some of the world’s greatest musical performers are lousy teachers. Teaching well has almost nothing to do with your ability to practice 10 hours a day without your head falling off. It requires a lot of thinking about cognitive psychology, communication, and even a certain set of sharp social skills.
The world has had many great inventors, but all the ones you probably know about (folks like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs) also knew a thing or two about economics.
I could go on and on. All the best stuff is “interdisciplinary”. But you got to figure that out on your own. The degree won’t really help. It could mean anything, or nothing.
Oddly enough, I got to thinking about this after reading the introduction to Erik Erikson’s Martin Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History:
So we may have to risk that bit of impurity which is inherent in the hyphen of the psycho-historical as well as of all other hypehenated approaches. They are the compost heap of today’s interdisciplinary efforts, which may help to fertilize new fields, and to produce future flowers of new methodological clarity.
His own metaphor is tongue-in-cheek. I love it.
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March 4th, 2010 at 9:20 AM
Yeah! Hook me up with a degree in Creative Writing, Early Childhood Development, Musical Analysis, Disability Advocacy, Web Design, English and Animal Science. Then I’ll go get a job as an Engineer.
March 4th, 2010 at 9:52 AM
Bwahaha! You got it.
December 14th, 2010 at 4:38 PM
Ouch. Just got my BA in INTS. Many schools took a wrong approach when implementing their INTS programs and set the bar too low. The flunkies from the business college or nursing ended up in INTS. Times are changing though. For my program we had to write a research paper as the culmination of our INTS studies. Not many undergrads have to do that. It was rigorous and as time goes on, the standards are only going up. If you really think about, life is an interdisciplinary undertaking. Just because some fail to see the connections doesn’t mean that the rest of us are getting “junk degrees”. For some, INTS fills a needed niche in education for their chosen field where for others it is just a way of graduating. I am somewhere in between. For me though, everything I do is about the interconnectedness. That is built into my personality and who I am, so INTS makes sense.
If you are REALLY ALL FOR Interdisciplinary Studies, why not try to showcase as a rather fantastic degree? I didn’t walk out of school expecting some insta-career like some folks. I studied what I wanted to learn because I know a degree doesn’t usually get you in the door, it is who you know. There is also the fact that many people don’t even work in a field directly related to their career. I think your concept of higher education is all wrong.
December 21st, 2010 at 1:26 PM
Hi Stephanie,
Thanks for your comments. I sounds to me like you have exactly the right idea for what to expect from your degree.
My degree was music theory, so I’ve always been in largely the same position as interdisciplinary studies folks. What I mean by being “all for” interdisciplinary studies is that I think that most creative innovations and insights in ANY field (engineering, education, art, etc.) come from combining ideas from other disciplines.
My only real problem with the “interdisciplinary studies” degree is how it is MARKETED. That could go for just about any degree too. We in higher ed have been often dishonest with students with regards to realistic career expectations and debt repayment. If someone is passionate about two or three subjects and wants to study for multiple degrees or for an interdisciplinary studies degree, that is just great. Where things go south is when the student is misled about possible future consequences. Easy credit, such as several years of federal student loans can put a person in the poor house for the next twenty years of their life with just a few strokes of a pen. College marketers and recruiters, and even mentors and professors sometimes are prone to take this topic lightly.
For example, (I’ll take an example close to home), there are HUNDREDS of graduates in Musicology in the United States every year. A fair number of them go on to grad school. If I were a grad school recruiter or major professor talking to an excited prospective student looking to get into a Musicology Ph.D. program, it should be my responsibility to at least bring up a few questions about the future. For instance, the Chronicle of Higher Ed (where virtually all university faculty openings are listed) listed fewer than 4 openings in the past year for tenure-track jobs teaching music history that earned more than $50k. And there are hundreds of people, including much older people with multiple published books and even celebrity musicians competing for those tiny handful of openings. If I did not at least MENTION this fact before encouraging the student to take out another $100k in loans, I would be dishonest and misleading. The student may be stupid for not investigating this themselves, but that would not let me off the hook.
Anyway, to the degree that interdisciplinary studies programs are being used to build custom niche degrees for students who understand the consequences and want to diversify their education, wonderful.
To the degree that they are used to keep a student enrolled who probably shouldn’t have ever been there in the first place or who could likely never graduate through any of the normal channels, then we are doing them a great disservice and truly selling them junk.
December 21st, 2010 at 7:26 PM
Sadly, if you were a recruiter for a college, you probably wouldn’t feel responsible to disclose the very few openings in a field because your job is to get the student to the school in order to make money off of them. The same goes for any kind of school… especially trade schools. I have a trade in addition to a university education. When I went to trade school, no one mentioned that my trade had the most licensed people in the trade than any other state in America! They don’t want you to know that the market is flooded or that in order to make a living wage in the profession that you need to feel comfortable gaining some entrepreneurial skills. They wouldn’t make as much money if they disclosed that up front.
So I guess I never looked at INTS as being as deceptive as any other type of educational plan since I think all schools engage in misrepresentation to some degree. My areas of concentration included relevant areas to business, but not what you could have taken if one were to get a “traditional” business degree. My degree is more suited for working with small businesses where people wear many hats anyways instead of a large corporation with well defined departments.
I think the INTS academic arena as a whole is going through growing pains in establishing an identity. I also think many programs faltered during their inception by not being as rigorous as other fields of study. But I do believe it is changing now and that can only help the field. All levels of education in America leave a lot to be desired at the moment. It is a systemic issue that starts early on. Not all kids are meant to go to college, yet parents and educators push it rather than encouraging the pursuit of passion, ability and suitability. Where does one even begin with such a flawed system???
February 15th, 2011 at 6:38 PM
I don’t know, but I spent six years in Marine Corps, got out, finished an AA Comp. Aided Design. worked for years in mechanical design firms. Just recently left Germany after 5 years, working for Dept. of Defense. I am currently finishing an Interdisciplinary degree emphasizing in Homeland Security and Information Technology. I think you have to gain experience before you design a Degree. I’m not worried.