Students with one major find it difficult to accomplish everything they need to, and yet a story in Sunday’s New York Times spoke of how numerous college students, including a quarter of UW-Madison students, are taking up double majors in their college careers.
Add to that the recent news stories about how people are working too hard and not getting enough sleep, and come graduation time you have a working class of students who are too burned out trying to prepare for the real world that they come into their new jobs already stressed out.
The reason students take on multiple majors cannot be solely blamed on society’s pressure to do as much as possible or on students’ hopes of gaining an edge (how can students have an edge by getting multiple majors if most are doing it?). Rather some of the blame needs to be placed on universities’ major programs themselves and the fact that as the world gets smaller, having one major does not give students the wide breadth of knowledge necessary to be as successful as possible in the real world.
At UW, when it comes to majoring in liberal arts fields, no major can adequately stand on its own. Every area is influenced by another, and one must have knowledge of them all to really understand what is going on.
Take journalism for example. This is the field that is about reporting on everything else the world is doing. The best reporters are those who specialize in another field such as science or politics. In addition, it is a field where most of the learning is done on the job. The journalism school does require 12 credits of social science courses to get a journalism degree, but that is not nearly enough to adequately give students the breadth of knowledge they should have to be a good journalist.
Rather smart, aspiring journalists will do one of two things: Either they will not major in journalism at all but get a major in another area and learn the world of journalism on the job; or they will major in journalism but also major in another area so as to gain that necessary outside knowledge.
The journalism school needs to broaden its horizons. Being a journalist does not automatically mean being a reporter, and the current curriculum for the news/editorial side focuses mainly on that. Instead, reduce the number of classes devoted to reporting and require actual experience working for media outside the school. Replace those reporting classes with classes that focus on the business side of journalism and on managing people. Classes on these topics will help students gain a broader knowledge of the business they are going into more than just how to write a story or develop an ad campaign.
Journalism is not the only major, though, that could use some broadening of its curriculum. Political science, economics, sociology and any of the Letters and Sciences majors could benefit from some cross college courses. All of these majors affect the other in the real world; they are all intertwined. To only focus on one is to only get one side of the story.
Currently, students are required to get 80 credits outside their respective major. However, much of that is taken up by the breadth requirements and taking one class in a specific area is not enough. These classes must also explain how the course work relates to the real world and other subject areas. Relating the information to how it works in the real world helps students understand the information better and students are more likely to then apply that information in their everyday lives.
Students these days have to major in more than one area to get adequate knowledge of the area they wish to specialize in. To perform well in any liberal arts type job students need to understand more about economics, political science, sociology, etc. UW needs to update its curriculum to help foster this cross college learning. In addition, advisors need to encourage freshman to take as many classes in as many different areas as possible. It’s not having multiple majors that give students the edge, it’s having as broad a base of knowledge as possible that does. Yet, it takes double, triple or quadruple majors at UW today to acquire that base of knowledge.
UW should not ignore majors in the sciences area either. To focus purely on chemistry or biology isolates people from understanding what is going on in the world and does not encourage people to become better-informed citizens, especially when it comes to voting for representatives in government.
One major just does not do it anymore in today’s world. With so many subjects intertwined, colleges cannot blame students for wanting more than one major. Rather colleges need to look at their curriculum and provide more cross major courses so as to provide students the broad base of knowledge necessary to be active citizens and more employable.
Katie Harbath ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism and political science.
