Interesting article - thanks for sharing!
Geology/geophysics enrollment goes up and down with the oil market and there is a research poster ironically on that topic posted in the Halbouty Geosciences Building (home of the geology/geophysics department and originally home of the petroleum engineering department) at TAMU. They merged the College of Geosciences in with many other art/sci majors 2 years ago to form the Arts and Sciences College which was an extremely unpopular move to students and faculty. It doesn’t seem that eliminating a minor in geophysics (for example) would result in any cost-savings when there is a geophysics major. You would think that an oil-loving state like Texas would like to keep pathways that allow people in other majors to obtain minors or certificates in things they may be interested in to set them apart for those interested in an industry so historically essential to the state. I imagine with the setting of “minimum numbers” that a number of programs may have been collateral damage to whatever the goals were in that exercise.
Following the links to previous articles suggests that there was outside lobbying against the LGBTQ studies minor that eventually led to this thing.
I’m shocked! I’m shocked I tell you.
Hence why I said there was collateral damage. One of the benefits of attending one of the largest universities in the country should be that you can obtain a major, minor or certificate in a specialty area that you can’t obtain at other places due to small size/enrollment. But this appears to be a case of “this isn’t political – it’s data-driven”.
I don’t see why any students needs 4 minors and a certificate along with their double majors. Why not major in the subject and then list on your resume that you concentrated in Asian studies or museum studies? If the school offers it as a minor, they may be required to offer the courses every year when the numbers don’t justify that. Take the classes and put it on your resume.
Why do students need a certificate? Major in the subject. My daughter has a certificate in museum studies, but her major was history and all the courses she took were in either the history or art history departments. She could just list them on an application for a museum job.
(Says the person who only had 1 major; no minors at my school although you could double major or double degree. A double degree required 150 credits).
I have no dog in this race (zero affiliations with A&M0 but I have to agree with twoinanddone here.) I have a friend who is a Dean at a different institution (but a big, public U) and based on her experience, these certificate programs are usually in response to student/parent demands. How to make a plain vanilla degree in statistics more “marketable”? Add a certificate in “Business Analytics”. How to make a nervous parent feel better about their kids employment prospects with a degree in Early Childhood Ed? A certificate in “Family Counseling”.
Never mind that the certificates don’t actually do much- in many states, you need some sort of licensing (via an MSW, PsyD, etc.) to do counseling which is absolutely not what four courses as an undergrad is going to do for you. Or- the certificate is window-dressing- a young graduate with a degree in applied math does NOT need a course to figure out how to do entry level analytics- i.e. a less rigorous version of a course he or she has already taken. So in her experience (based on one very large institution only), the parents/students demand, the U complies, it requires hiring another administrator (which of course parents hate because non-instructional staff is seen as wasteful) and the cycle continues. The institutions that DON’T hire a staff person to keep the balls in the air on the certificate programs get tagged as “non-responsive” when the kid doesn’t get an email returned in an hour with questions like “If I drop one of my certificate courses after the drop date, will it show up as a W on my transcript even though it’s not my major?”
It’s a vicious cycle.
We can agree to disagree. Having those options is not a path for everybody. I can see the value and the marketability of having minors and certificates in OTHER subjects from what a person is majoring in. It is a deeper dive than the “entry level” general ed course. I’m thinking of the pre-med student that has a major in biochemistry with a minor in Spanish and a minor in medical anthropology, or even more radical – a minor in LGBT studies or African Studies or Women’s studies. And unless a person has literally nothing else to show for 4 (much less 6) years in college, there should be no room to list individual cursory/beginning classes on various topics on a resume. But saying that a person has a minor or certificate in something does demonstrate that a person did something more that was focused, differentiates them from others and may be worth mentioning on a resume.
I’m a big fan of the word “and” as well as exploring the “intersections” of different topics of study. Combinations of things or specializations seem to be the most interesting. But maybe that example pre-med student should just major in biology and call it good…they should be able to compete for those competitive med school spots just fine blending in with the crowd.
(Says the person with 2 majors and 2 minors and a MS in an entirely different field).
I don’t think we disagree. I was a Classics major- the oldest interdisciplinary topic in higher ed. Languages (both living and dead), art history, literature, political theory, archaeology, architecture. Not every Classics major has the time to take every single course which is relevant-- and I think that’s a feature and not a bug. If I’d gone to grad school I’d surely have improved my knowledge of the geology and topography of the ancient Mediterranean world but I didn’t need to take four courses on sand and rocks to be conversant on the challenges of excavating in a hot and dry climate.
The question is must a U declare specific nomenclature for the interdisciplinary studies. Does it need its own “certificate” with the infrastructure (department level advising for students doing the certificate vs. the major?) Does it need the be able to offer every single combination to every student? No major requires 8 semesters of work in that subject alone. Does a student need the designation or can’t they just be a bio major who is fluent in Mandarin, or a history major who can program in R?
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