The global economy may be on the way to recovery, but for many graduating students job market woes are still an obstacle. With new data showing the classes of 2009 and 2010 doing worse than the class of 2008, some might wonder if it will ever get better. Students are trying everything to gain an advantage and, for some, that means turning to esoteric and niche fields where they won’t be vying for positions with quite as many peers. But is this a sensible strategy?
Well, they won’t have to look far for such programs. From “Adventure Education” to a dual major in “EcoGastronomy”—yes it’s a program for environmentally-friendly eating—the list of highly-specific university programs has been growing in recent years. And while these disciplines may sound innovative and exciting, the reality checks that ivory tower over-specialization bump into may tell the story better.
For every student who pursues this sort of highly-specialized degree, a dozen more are taking classes from these trendy disciplines, often as part of their “general education” requirements.
One telling example is a freshmen seminar at Appalachian State University called “What if Harry Potter is Real?” Rather than giving incoming students a survey of important world historical events, the class gets caught up in the weeds of post-modern musings and ‘what-ifs.’ By focusing on “issues of race, class, gender, time, place,” the class manages to be attractive to both professors who specialize in historical critique and fun-seeking students without a teaching one bit of actual history.
Students at top universities are in trouble too. MIT students can explore a slice of history in a course on American professional wrestling. More like a sliver. By offering classes centered on fun but not-so-foundational topics, institutions like these encourage their students to ignore the big picture. They create a tendency toward hyper-specialization that sticks with students when they move on.
Part of the problem is that some of those who achieve super-specialized degrees go on to become the professors who teach these classes. Specialization has picked up considerably as academics strive to differentiate themselves, carving out tiny spaces of expertise in an effort to make themselves irreplaceable. But while all these new offerings sometimes help professors achieve their ends, they’re wreaking havoc on the actual education of students.
All those niche professors are not only encouraging students to follow them down the rabbit hole, they’re now failing to provide the general education that transforms students, regardless of their major, into graduates prepared for an ever-changing job market and civic-minded citizens capable of critical thought and effective communication.
Overly-specific education is also directly detrimental to students’ future job prospects. Today’s economy increasingly favors the intellectually agile, and students without a broad educational background are losing out. A degree in information technology (IT) may have seemed like a job guarantee to the students who flooded that field in the 1990s. Then, the tech bubble burst, the economy shifted, and those who had no other skills found themselves unemployed. Job market shifts have always been a reality, but churn in the labor market has picked up, making the drive towards specialization more dangerous. In fact, students now in school can’t expect to hold the same job throughout their career and are likely to have multiple careers throughout their lives. Without a return to the basics students will graduate into a world that wants them to be everything and find that they can be nothing.