Major Commitment, Minimal Gain

On Monday, Columbia College sophomores will begin to declare their majors or concentrations. When I was in high school, this moment seemed incredibly important. I thought that, at the middle of my sophomore year, I would need to declare my future plans, or at least make a decision that would significantly impact my future profession. Nevertheless, the truth for many of us is that our major will have minimal impact on our future careers. This realization begs the question of whether there is any point to the major requirement or if it is just an unnecessary demand that prohibits students from taking important or interesting courses.

It is undeniable that many majors have little influence on career plans. For example, students hoping to become doctors or dentists need not major in a health-related subject, and are often even encouraged to declare an “unscientific” major. The pre-health advising Web site states that medical schools “like to see a range of interests among students in their entering classes, and would consider an art history major and a biochemistry major equally prepared for medical school.” For those in the upper echelons of law and politics, as well, their major seems to be an insignificant element. When Samuel Alito was nominated to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor in 2005, for example, the New York Times made no mention of his major—just that he received his undergraduate degree from Princeton. I’ve never heard Wolf Blitzer or Chris Matthews discuss whether any of the presidential candidates majored in political science or how that decision should be taken into account in the election process. That majors are minimally significant in future career plans is essentially admitted on the Columbia Web site, which states that the major/concentration requirement “is not designed to produce professionally trained specialists, nor is it assumed that students will ultimately be employed in work related to the subject in which they are majoring or concentrating.”

Rather, the purpose of the requirement, according to the Web site, is to give students the “experience of doing sustained and advanced work.” Yet this sustained and advanced work is normally just a number of courses in one subject. Some majors, such as political science, require that students concentrate in one subject area, which basically means just taking courses that are just more closely related. Others, such as film studies, require students to take particular courses, some in a specific order. But, as the Web site notes, the ability to complete these majors does not make students experts on their subjects. It just shows that they can pass a number of courses that are relatively related and sometimes take these courses in a specific order.

A demonstration that a student can pass a number of related courses is too great a price for what students sacrifice. Indeed, in order to successfully meet the major requirement, many students often need to forgo courses that may greatly interest them or, more importantly, be relevant to their future careers. A film studies major intending to go to law school, for example, would find it very difficult to take a constitutional law class offered in the spring because he or she would have to take a number of conflicting major requirements during that time. Hence, students are sacrificing opportunities to learn about their potential future professions to complete the overly rigorous demands of a major.

I in no way mean to blame Columbia for this situation. I actually applaud the University for giving students the opportunity to concentrate instead of major. The real blame for this situation belongs to the American education system as a whole, for it has made these worthless majors a fundamental expectation of higher education. In many European countries, students decide on a specialization before university and then spend their higher education learning the skills that will be important in their future careers. Some American majors, such as economics or many of the engineering disciplines, give students this career training as well. Yet for most American students, the major is a meaningless requirement that just forces them to sacrifice interesting courses or classes that might be important for future careers. Clearly, this disadvantage outweighs the benefits of completing a few classes in a particular subject that may have no connection to a student’s future.

The author is a Columbia College sophomore.