For Students Seeking Edge, One Major Just Isn't Enough
Darccity
For Students Seeking Edge, One Major Just Isn't Enough
By TAMAR LEWIN
Having honed the habit of achievement in the race to get into college, students
are increasingly pursuing double, triple and even quadruple majors when they
get there, amassing credentials they hope will show their diligence and,
perhaps, give them an edge getting into graduate school or landing a job in a
difficult market.
Katherine Lochbrunner was one of the superachievers, graduating from Boston
University last spring with a quadruple major, in Hispanic language and
literature, art history, Latin and classical civilization.
"I just couldn't narrow it down to one field, " said Ms. Lochbrunner, who now
teaches Latin at St. Peter's Preparatory School in Jersey City. "I thought I'd
do Spanish, but then I discovered how much I liked art history. And I thought
four majors would be good at the point when I was looking for a job."
At Georgetown University, 23 percent of the 2002 graduates had double majors,
compared with 14 percent of the class of 1996. At Washington University in St.
Louis, 42 percent of last year's arts and science graduates had double majors
or double degrees, compared with 28 percent of the 1997 graduates.
Nearly a quarter of the students in the University of Wisconsin at Madison's
graduating class have double majors. But that no longer counts for too much:
About 160 students are getting triple majors or more, and even quintuple majors
are not unheard of.
Behind the trend, in part, is the fact that more freshmen now arrive on campus
with extensive college credits from Advanced Placement exams, university summer
school classes, or college courses they took in high school.
But other factors are at play.
For students who spent their high school years pursuing Advanced Placement
credits, high test scores and prestigious extracurricular activities, the
multiple major seems to be the Next Big Thing — even for freshmen, and
parents of freshmen.
"All that pressure, all that push to give the child an edge, that you see
around college admissions now continues into college, with many parents seeing
the double major as the marker that this is a student doing all she can do,"
said Susan K. Jackson, senior associate dean at Boston University. "I was just
at my son's parents weekend at Yale, at a faculty panel, where one parent went
to the open mike and asked, in anguished tones, whether her daughter should be
doing a double major. What she seemed to be saying was, `Is that the most
ambitious thing? Is that what will give her the edge?' "
The faltering economy, with its dim job prospects for new graduates, plays a
role, too.
"I think students are increasingly aware that they might have more than one
career, that they might need expertise in a variety of areas," said Carol
Christ, the president of Smith College. "They have a very savvy eye out to
what's going to pay the rent."
Many educators are dubious that multiple majors do students much good once they
leave college.
"My suspicion is that they're more valuable to the seller than the buyer," said
Mark Schenker, Yale College's dean of academic affairs.
Still, multiple majors believe they should be especially marketable.
"I'm hedging my bets," said Elisabeth Thompson, who is majoring in mathematics,
Spanish and computer science at Madison. "The more fields I am prepared or
qualified to work in, the less I have to worry about problems in any given
industry," Ms. Thompson said.
Cheryl Biel, George Washington University's director of academic planning and
assessment, said this generation is trying hard to cover all the bases: "These
are the same kids trying to get all the internships. It may be a kid doing
pre-med, but they want an interesting nonscience major that will show they're a
broad person, and give them an edge for med school."
But administrators at some schools worry that meeting all the departmental
requirements stops multiple majors from sampling a broad liberal arts
education.
Then, too, some college officials doubt that double majors confer any real
benefit in graduate school admissions or the job market. Some advise students
to use extra credits to graduate early and get a master's degree, rather than
taking five years to complete three or four undergraduate majors, as many want
to do.
Still, many schools are seeing a steady rise in double majors. The increase has
been especially striking at George Washington University, which has 486 double
majors this fall, compared with 70 a decade earlier.
The trend is less evident at the most selective institutions, including those
in the Ivy League, where the use of Advanced Placement credits is increasingly
restricted.
But at many schools, the lure of multiple majors has become so strong,
administrators say, that some freshmen announce their intent to double major
even before they have chosen a single area of interest. "We get a lot of
freshmen who come in saying they definitely want a double major, but when we
ask in what, they have no idea what they want to study," said Timothy Walsh,
director of Wisconsin's Cross-College Advising Service. "They just think they
have to double major to look serious."
At Wisconsin, many of the multiple majors stick to related fields: combinations
like physics, astrophysics, math and computer science, or zoology, biology and
environmental studies are common.
That seems to be less true at small liberal arts colleges, though. At Colorado
College, for example, where double majors won formal recognition only five
years ago, most are used to following far-flung interests.
"Most of our double majors have one major in the area where they think their
professional specialty will be and another that reflects a very different
interest, like a pre-med biology major who's also majoring in French," said
Timothy Fuller, a political science professor who was dean when the Colorado
College faculty approved double majors.
Occasionally, combinations represent a compromise: where the mother is pushing
for law school, for example, and the son wants to pursue ethnomusicology, a
"one for me, one for Mom" double major in political science and music can keep
the whole family happy.
Dustin Harber arrived in Madison last year as a freshman expecting to double
major in computer science and Japanese. But already, in his second year, he's
doubled again, and now plans a quadruple major in computer science, Japanese,
math and Asian studies.
"I knew I could fit in several majors because I got here with A.P. credits in
calculus, English lit, English language, computer science, U.S. history,
government and something else I must be forgetting," he said. "Then I got a lot
of credits for all the Japanese courses I placed out of."
Mr. Harber, who also holds two part-time jobs, does not go around bragging
about his quadruple major.
"I usually tell people I'm doing three, because if I say I'm doing four majors,
they call me a psycho and think I'm this big overachiever trying to make myself
look better," he said. "But I'm just a regular student, trying to get
everything I can out of college. I am planning to go to grad school in computer
science, which is pretty competitive, and if they see I have computer science
and math, and this other interest too, I hope they'll think, `Hey, this
candidate is well rounded.' "
For many students like Mr. Harber, who managed a tough course load and many
activities in high school, hard work seems normal, while the idea of slacking
off, or using all those credits to graduate early, holds little interest.
Corey Chapman, a UCLA senior majoring in English and history, said the drive of
the incoming freshmen was striking last summer, when he was one of the
university's orientation counselors, assigned to answer freshmen questions,
some of which concerned multiple majors.
"I think they feel like they still have to be complete overachievers," Mr.
Chapman said. "It was like they just had to do more. They asked when you can
declare a double major and which A.P. credits would apply. I had to tell them
the rules changed since I got here, and you can't use those credits to fill
requirements as much anymore. And I tried to say that their A.P.'s had helped
them get into UCLA, but now that they're here they should try to have some fun
and explore new ideas."
While students are showing growing interest in multiple majors, there is still
considerable debate in academia about whether that is good or bad. A few
colleges are resisting the trend to multiple majors, seeking, instead, to help
undergraduates experience the broadest possible liberal arts education.
"We think you miss out if you focus on one or two areas," said Ellen Guyer,
dean of academic programs at Macalester College in Minnesota. "One reason you
come to a liberal arts college is to take courses in areas you never even heard
of, intriguing courses that broaden your world view and expose you to new
ideas. About a third of the students in our last graduating class had double
majors, but we're trying to discourage it. Some students feel it makes them
more marketable, that if you add up credentials, more is better. Whether that
has any validity after college is anybody's guess."
Darccity
>get there, amassing credentials they hope will show their diligence and,
>perhaps, give them an edge getting into graduate school or landing a job in a
>At Washington University in St.
>Louis, 42 percent of last year's arts and science graduates had double majors
>"I think students are increasingly aware that they might have more than one
>"The more fields I am prepared for...
>qualified to work in, the less I have to worry about ...
>At Wisconsin, many of the multiple majors stick to related fields:
>combinations represent a compromise: where the mother is pushing
>for law school, for example, and the son wants to pursue ethnomusicology, a
>"one for me, one for Mom" double major in political science and music can
>but now that they're here they should try to have some fun
>and explore new ideas."
As a long-time college advisor and career counselor, I normally tell students
this trend is indeed wrong-headed.
1. For those headed toward PhDs and academic (rather than professional school)
degree admission, you don't even need an undergrad major to pursue a MA or PhD,
as long as you have taken the primary undergrad core courses (and lacking
those, grad students often just take those as remedial coursework). Academic
grad schools are primarily looking for research potential, and an extensive
analytical skill set of the applicant is a crucial predictor of that potential.
Math, stat, and other research skills are especially essential in the sciences
and social sciences.
2. A bachelors degree, no matter how many majors, minors, or concentrations,
is merely a bachelors degree. GPA, Letters of reference, where you went, score
on GREs/LSATs/GMATs, internships or especially-relevant work experiences are
just as important for grad/professional school admission.
3. For career edge, majors don't help you much, because most majors are not
considered credentials signifying competence in doing anything jobwise.
Instead of pursuing gobs of majors, you need to generate resume entries that
signal an employer what you can do: what languages are reasonably fluent in,
software competences, analytical skills, and involvement in activities that
indicate responsibility, leadership, and achievement, and relevance of work
history.
4. A majority of majors offered are not disciplines, but instead an assemblage
of coursework on a common subject matter. Thus, majoring in those subject
areas doesn't demonstrate to employers, grad school admission officers, or
professional schools anything more than interest and familiarity with a set of
topics. The reason colleges require students to pursue a major at all as an
undergrad is so that students can investigate intensively a particular
discipline (not to prepare for a career). How can you tell if a "major"
involves learning a discipline? Disciplines must involve mastery of a common
set of fundamental skills, methodology, and paradigm (often including colateral
requirements of coursework taught outside the parent department). If most
courses in a major require only a single foundation prereq (or upper division
standing), that major is not a discipline. Unfortunately, some left-leaning
liberal arts colleges have even gutted their real disciplines in order to
stimulate enrollment or deny the need for analytical skills.
Kath
news:20021117115736...@mb-mp.aol.com...
> >For Students Seeking Edge, One Major Just Isn't Enough
> >Having honed the habit of achievement in the race to get into college,
> >are increasingly pursuing double, triple and even quadruple majors when
they
> >get there, amassing credentials they hope will show their diligence and,
> >perhaps, give them an edge getting into graduate school or landing a job
in a
> >difficult market. ...
I have to agree with Darccity here. For these quadruple majors, it seems to
be a case of "If one major is good, two are better, and four will make me
better than anyone else". What's next -- sextuple majors? It's almost
like fertility treatments that seem to aim for "how many viable fetuses can
we produce" with no attention paid to the health of those babies or the
quality of their potential lives. Education is not a race to see who has
amassed the most credentials. It should, instead, be the development of
critical thinking skills that can be applied over a wide area with a
concentration in an area (or maybe two related areas) in which one has a
passion and can create some expertise.
What kind of career is a person with majors in Hispanic language and
literature, art history, Latin and classical civilization looking for? I
would see that person as a jack of all trades, master of none.
rick++
academic and non-academic- I've worked at. Its considered a sign of
procrastination in pursuing higher degrees or indecision. Its far better
to do a new major as a higher degree degree- Ms. or PhD- than linger at
the same degree level. Many colleges will let you simultaneous pursue
a B.S. and M.S. degree in four years if financial restrictions are a
factor.
Karin
restrict admission to those seeking a second BA anyway.
My thought is if you are able to fulfill requirements for more than two
majors consecutively, it sounds like the college is not rigorous enough
for you in the first place.