Hello, I’m an incoming college student majoring in international relations and participating in Air Force ROTC. I was thinking of having a double major in a STEM field such as computer science, physics, or astronomy to give me a possibly edge in working for tech companies, the CIA, or NASA after an Air Force career. I just want thoughts about what you all think would be the best degree to pair with IR for a path such as this. Also, to add a little spice to the discussion, what do you all think would be the best path for a possible future career in…wait for it…exopolitical diplomacy?
This will depend on your school’s degree requirements and how they fit in with your Air Force commitments. If you are thinking about doing a STEM degree, I’d suggest you make sure you are taking math this upcoming term so that you can start laying down the foundation for the degree until you figure out in the the next term or two what you want to do. STEM classes tend to be taken in a series so it is better for you to have started the series and not need it if you change your mind than for you to start a series late and be struggling to catch up later.
If you want to work for in a technical role later in your career, an astronomy degree isn’t going to be much of a contributing factor in most tech companies. Any technical experience you’ve gained from the Air Force will be more important than having a degree that is from a STEM field. Physics or computer science may help, but you may be out of touch with where the field currently is by the time you finish your time in the Air Force if you aren’t involved in technical roles while in the military. Especially with CS, the field moves so fast that technology from 5-6 years ago is basically obsolete.
I like where you’re going with exopolitical diplomacy, that would probably be one of the coolest jobs on Earth. But I don’t see much earning potential from being an exopolitical diplomat in our lifetime. Might I suggest technology policy (https://elliott.gwu.edu/international-science-and-technology-policy) instead?
Three pieces of advice for you, coming form an international affairs student at GWU
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I’m sure you’ll figure this out this fall, but college is hard. I’m not implying that you’re not a hard worker or ambitious. I’m sure you are considering your dream career is exopolitical diplomacy and you’re a to-be officer in the US Air Force. But obtaining a commission in the military while pursuing a double major in two fields of study that are diametrically opposed to each other will likely be impossible… unless of course you’re an android who doesn’t require sleep.
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For tech jobs at the CIA, NSA, and other similar government agencies, in depth study of the geopolitical world isn’t really a desired skill. Simply having interest is the qualifying mark. This is because those tech jobs are simply tech jobs and not much more; NSA Signal Intelligence Officers and Cyber Operations people have similar skill sets and educational background to people working for Facebook; they just merely apply their knowledge for national security purposes. In depth analytic work of political leadership, terrorism, nuclear threats, etc is left up to different people.
So basically what I’m advising is; pick either an International Affairs course of study, or a STEM course of study. Trying to blend them too much will be messy and likely won’t pay off much in the end.
- One of the few spheres where tech knowledge and diplomatic knowledge truly blends together is in technology policy, as pointed out @hisllama above. My school has a program in it, and I believe Georgetown does too. Not sure where you’ll be going to study, but if they have classes in that sphere, they may be up your alley.
I agree with @gdubya, especially on point 2.
The tech people in the government agencies are not the ones applying international relations knowledge. They’re given a technical task, such as writing software, trying to break encryption, performing data analysis, etc, and that’s what they focus on. The people doing the political analytic work make decisions based on the results and capabilities of tech people.
I will add that if you want to transition to civilian in a government agency, there is a clear path for that coming from the military. They will value your skills from the military and that, combined with your international relations education, will be more than enough to be competitive for the more political analytic roles.
Mmm, I half-disagree. While it’s true that most people with technical jobs in the government and other political agencies have technical backgrounds (and that’s the important part), it’s not entirely true that those people have zero political/international relations skills and/or that everybody is such a specialist that they really don’t know what the other side is doing. In order to appropriately write the software, break the encryption, and definitely perform the data analysis, you have to know the hows and the whys. Having studied international relations or a related area can certainly help - both getting a job and your understanding of and performance in the job. (The technical people who tend to advance have great interpersonal skills and domain knowledge.) So while a double major may not be the best course of action with ROTC, minoring in IR - or at least taking a selection of classes in the field - is probably a good idea.
But here’s the thing: You didn’t say you wanted a technical role. Your post seems to imply, OP, that what you really want to do is work for a government agency (“the CIA or NASA”) and potentially do IR-related work, or work for a tech company, but you think having a major in a STEM field will give you an ‘edge.’ It actually may or may not depending on the kind of WORK you want to do - and that is what really should factor into your decision.
First of all, you are talking about after an Air Force career. That can be as short as 4 years or as long as 20+. Even 8 years from now (4 years college + 4 years AF), we have no idea what the world will look like or what kinds of jobs will exist. I’ve mentioned before that the world changed significant between 2004 (when I entered college) and 2014 (when I finished my PhD); companies that seemed rock solid didn’t exist anymore, companies that either didn’t exist or were little known were suddenly hot places to work, and entire career fields that didn’t exist in 2004 suddenly did - and paid a lot of money. Picking a major based on what’s hot now isn’t necessarily a good proposition (think of all those people who went to law school between 2005 and 2008!)
So while you shouldn’t throw practicality completely to the wind, let your interests be your main guide in selecting a major and thinking about career choices.
Second of all, tech companies hire looooooots of people and I’m not even sure most of them are software developers anymore. Maybe? I work at a tech company, and I am not an SDET, and most of the people I work with on a daily basis are not SDETs. It takes tons of people to make a tech company work - including lobbyists, lawyers, policy specialists, analysts, etc. Look at this [elections account executive at Google](google jobs dc), this [head of analytics in the federal government vertical at Google](google jobs dc), this [corporate strategy and development manager at Microsoft](microsoft jobs dc), this [director of cybersecurity policy at Microsoft](microsoft jobs dc), and [this communications associate at Uber](https://www.uber.com/careers/list/21739/).
A major in physics or astronomy would give you some quantitative chops that might land you in some analyst or technical program management positions. But you don’t have to major in a random STEM field to end up in tech.