More than 900 U.S. colleges allow students to create their own majors, designing their own programs of study with the assistance of an adviser, reports a Wall Street Journal article, “Can’t Pick a College Major? Create One.”
Many schools even create special departments or programs to further support students in constructing the perfect college major. In allowing students to pursue their individual passions, these programs can “spark students’ enthusiasm for learning and sometimes equip them for complicated, cross-disciplinary jobs or emerging career fields.”
In an economy when many students have trouble finding jobs related to their particular areas of study, optimizing a major so that it has a better chance of penetrating the job market could be beneficial.
While a highly specialized major could grab the attention of certain employers, many employers (as well as many parents) are wary of the do-it-yourself study method, worried that graduates may not receive certain educational basics. They worry, as the article point out, that “people will look at ‘globalization studies’ and say, ‘Omigod, what is that? Like basket weaving?’”
In fact, some schools don’t allow individualized majors for exactly this reason. According to the WSJ article, “faculty and other curriculum experts are best equipped to know what students need to learn, and that traditional majors are based on decades of sound scholarship.”
Also, when budgets are tight, using professors as advisers for independent majors can be time-consuming and expensive.
Here is a list of some students’ do-it-yourself majors:
- Anthropology of mental health and illness
- Asian-American studies
- Bioethics in crosscultural perspectives
- Complex organizations and informational systems
- Environmental racism
- Ethnobotany
- Ethology (animal psychology and behavior)
- Historical clothing
- Magic
- Music promotion
- Neuroscience, human behavior and society
- Peace and conflict resolution
- Sociology of fashion
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Source: Can't Pick a College Major? Create OneCan't Pick a College Major? Create One (Can't Pick a College Major? Create One)
Read the full article: The Do-It-Yourself College Major
