Majors: Vestiges of an Antiquated System
By Kyle Warneck
Staff Writer

A friend of mine, who happens to be an expert in higher education, told me a disturbing story the other day. His daughter is at a small liberal arts college and she, like thousands of students across the country on any given day, was confused choosing a major. She asked her father, "Why do we have majors at all?" My friend, the expert in higher education, said that he honestly did not have an answer. Perhaps once long ago, before Prometheus was painted on Frary and CMC became coed, majors might have meant something. Maybe if you majored in History, you really were a historian. Maybe, a Religion major was proficient in all the world's major religions. Maybe, Physics majors actually new how to build rocket ships from scratch. On the other hand, maybe we just knew a lot less back then.

Something has changed within liberal arts colleges; the question, "What should I major in?" becomes less and less relevant all the time. The thousands of sleepless nights, advising sessions and course selection strategy sessions with friends might not matter quite as much as we sometimes think they do. In some ways, what we major in will be the most superficial and irrelevant statement we can make about our education. The purpose of a liberal arts education is to teach us to read, analyze and communicate. In other words, we learn how to think. Majors are just what we decided to practice thinking about.

These days no one would assert that an undergraduate degree actually teaches you about anything. Can one really claim he or she is an expert after eight politics courses and a senior seminar? Experts emerge from graduate schools. A large number of Pomona students end up attending some sort of graduate school within five years of graduation anyway. Writing a resume is a reminder of how little our major means. Beneath a major on most resumes you will find the dreaded "relevant coursework" box. This is the part of the resume where you tell your employers what you actually learned. Even on the most prestigious resume, it is never more than a handful of classes. By implication the rest are "irrelevant," probably counting toward one major or another. A degree from a liberal arts school might be worth a lot, but your major is worth almost nothing.

There's an old joke. A guy walks in for his first day of work. His boss hands him a broom and orders him to sleep the floor. The guy says, "I don't think you understand. I just graduated from a prestigious small liberal arts school." The boss turns around and says, "Oh, well then I better show you how to sweep the floor." Let's see what a liberal arts education has taught me about analyzing this joke. On one hand, the joke is making fun of liberal arts education. The joke assumes that the purpose of college is the antiquated trade-school model where one learns a practical skill, like land-surveying. Today's liberal arts school is so far from that that we don't even learn how to use a broom. There's some truth in that, but one can read against the grain of the joke and ask if that is such a bad thing after all. I do not think that is what a Pomona education strives to be. Yes, it is true, my classes have not taught me how to make anything or do anything that people might want done. But they have provided me with skills. They're skills in thinking, which improve no matter which discipline you choose.

In the collective subconscious of Pomona College, there is some repressed acknowledgement of the absurdity of majors. The system of strictly defined traditional disciplines is crumbling around us. We are in the postmodern age of the "cyborg" major. Some call this phenomenon interdisciplinary studies. The puritanical elements in education, those hoping to revive cartography as a major, see this cyborg major as the enemy, but at Pomona it is everywhere. Interdisciplinary majors are for those of us who refuse to major in anything, and their popularity is growing every year. Departments are increasing the requirements for majors to try to include enough of other disciplines to keep students happy. Let's take the most extreme interdisciplinary major at the school, Public Policy Analysis-Science, Technology, and Society (PPA- STS). PPA- STS majors not only win the acronym war, but they have actually combined two interdisciplinary majors. According to the department list from last year, 18 courses were required for the major. The school maximum for any major is 16 courses. This year the department, in what I read as a cry of submission, the department has changed the description to require only 16 courses.

Still, some of us miss the glory days when majors tried to fight the system. STS was not so much of a major as an attempt to minor in half the departments offered in the college. Now that's a major that's breaking all the rules. This revolution has been quelled for now, but it cannot be suppressed forever. I think this expansion of majors is connected with realizations about their own inadequacy. No senior graduates with every course he or she should have taken to be an expert in a subject. Often students blame the PAC requirements, but the problem is that students are expecting the wrong things. No one should want to take enough classes to be an expert in anything. Instead, they should be able to improve the skills that interest them and find something they like to think about. These days, "What major are you?" is just an interesting question.

The era of majors is over. It is time for students to take up the flag of a new era, the era where even the cyborg major is too focused. We are in the era of general education. Refuse to major in anything! Or if you feel a need to cave to the hegemonic tradition of choosing a major, take heed in the irrelevance of that decision. Stop panicking! Sit down with an adviser and decide what courses and professors you want to take and what skills you think you want to develop. Then find a major not in the way.

Majors will not determine your life, your being or even what you know. Accept it! When the PAC review happens next year, do not scream for fewer PACs. Demand more. Insist that majors be shrunk and that students benefit more time to study what they want. Fight the system! Major in nothing! And whatever you do, don't tell my parents I wrote this, at least not until they pay my bill for next semester.