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An academic major is the
academic discipline An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...
to which an
undergraduate student Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, in the United States, an entry- ...
formally commits. A student who successfully completes all courses required for the major qualifies for an
undergraduate degree An undergraduate degree (also called first degree or simply degree) is a colloquial term for an academic degree earned by a person who has completed undergraduate courses. In the United States, it is usually offered at an institution of higher e ...
. The word ''major'' (also called ''concentration'', particularly at private colleges) is also sometimes used administratively to refer to the academic discipline pursued by a
graduate student Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate (bachelor's) degree. The organization and s ...
or
postgraduate student Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate (bachelor's) degree. The organization and struc ...
in a
master's A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.
or doctoral program. An academic major typically involves completion of a combination of required and elective courses in the chosen discipline. The latitude a student has in choosing courses varies from program to program. An academic major is administered by select faculty in an academic department. A major administered by more than one academic department is called an ''interdisciplinary major''. In some settings, students may be permitted to design their own major, subject to faculty approval. In the United States, students are usually not required to choose their major discipline when first enrolling as an undergraduate. In addition, most colleges and universities require that all students take a general
core curriculum In education, a curriculum (; : curricula or curriculums) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view ...
in the
liberal arts Liberal arts education (from Latin "free" and "art or principled practice") is the traditional academic course in Western higher education. ''Liberal arts'' takes the term '' art'' in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically th ...
. Normally students are required to commit by the end of their second academic year at latest, and some schools even disallow students from declaring a major until this time. A student who declares two academic majors is said to have a ''double major''. A ''coordinate major'' is an ancillary major designed to complement the primary one. A coordinate major requires fewer
course credit A credit is the recognition for having taken a course at school or university, used as measure if enough hours have been made for graduation. University credits United States Credit hours In a college or university in the United States, students ...
s to complete. Many colleges also allow students to declare a minor field, a secondary discipline in which they also take a substantial number of classes, but not so many as would be necessary to complete a major.


History

The roots of the academic major as we now know it first surfaced in the 19th century as "alternative components of the undergraduate degree"."The Academic Major." Encyclopedia of Education. Ed. Guthrie, James W. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006. 19-23. Before that, all students receiving an
undergraduate degree An undergraduate degree (also called first degree or simply degree) is a colloquial term for an academic degree earned by a person who has completed undergraduate courses. In the United States, it is usually offered at an institution of higher e ...
would be required to study the same slate of courses geared at a comprehensive " liberal education". In 1825, the
University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...
initiated an educational approach that would allow students to choose from an area of focus. Offering eight options (which included ancient languages, anatomy, medicine), other higher educational systems in Europe began to develop into a stricter specialization approach to studies after the American Civil War. In the United States, in the second half of the 19th century, concentrated foci at the undergraduate level began to prosper and popularize, but the familiar term "major" did not appear until 1877 in a
Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
catalogue. The major generally required 2 years of study, while the minor required one. From 1880 to 1910,
Baccalaureate Baccalaureate may refer to: * ''Baccalauréat'', a French national academic qualification * Bachelor's degree, or baccalaureate, an undergraduate academic degree * English Baccalaureate, a performance measure to assess secondary schools in England ...
granting American institutions vastly embraced a free-elective system, where students were endowed with a greater freedom to explore intellectual curiosities. The 1930s witnessed the appearance of first interdisciplinary major:
American studies American studies or American civilization is an interdisciplinary field of scholarship that examines American literature, history, society, and culture. It traditionally incorporates literary criticism, historiography and critical theory. Schol ...
. Culture was the grounding concept and orchestrating principle for its courses. 1960s to 1970s experienced a new tide of interdisciplinary majors and a relaxation of curriculum and graduation requirements. (
Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
spawned
Women's studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppress ...
and Black Studies, for example.) In the 1980s and 1990s, "
interdisciplinary studies Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...
,
multiculturalism The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for " ethnic pluralism", with the two terms often used interchang ...
,
feminist pedagogy Feminist pedagogy is a pedagogical framework grounded in feminist theory. It embraces a set of epistemological theories, teaching strategies, approaches to content, classroom practices, and teacher-student relationships. Feminist pedagogy, along ...
, and a renewed concern for the coherence and direction of the
undergraduate Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, in the United States, an entry-le ...
program began to assail the Baccalaureate degree dominated by the academic major."


Major's significance

The academic major is considered a defining and dominant characteristic of the
undergraduate degree An undergraduate degree (also called first degree or simply degree) is a colloquial term for an academic degree earned by a person who has completed undergraduate courses. In the United States, it is usually offered at an institution of higher e ...
. "The ascendancy of the disciplines in the late nineteenth century and their continuing dominance throughout the twentieth century have left an indelible imprint on the shape and direction of the academic major" and research affirms that the academic major is the strongest and clearest curricular link to gains in student learning. While general education is considered to be the breadth component of an undergraduate education, the major is commonly deemed the depth aspect. Choice of major has a significant impact on employment prospects and lifetime earnings.


Discourse and disagreement

Through its development, scholars, academics, and educators have disagreed on the purpose and nature of the undergraduate major. Generally, proponents of the major and
departmental system ''Departmental'' is a 1980 Australian TV movie based on a play by Mervyn Rutherford. It was part of the ABC's Australian Theatre Festival.Ed. Scott Murray, ''Australia on the Small Screen 1970-1995'', Oxford Uni Press, 1996 p43 Reviews were poor ...
"argue that they enable an academic community to foster the development, conservation and diffusion of knowledge." In contrast, critics "claim that they promote intellectual tribalism, where
specialization Specialization or Specialized may refer to: Academia * Academic specialization, may be a course of study or major at an academic institution or may refer to the field in which a specialist practices * Specialty (medicine), a branch of medical ...
receives favor over the mastery of multiple epistemologies, where broader values of liberal learning and of campus unity are lost, and where innovation is inhibited due to parochial opposition to new sub-specialties and research methods."


Difference from academic concentration

In many universities, an academic concentration is a focus within a specific academic major, that is a field of study within a specific academic major. For example, interdisciplinary programs in humanities or social sciences will require a student to pick a specific academic concentration as a focus within their academic major, such as an academic major in Interdisciplinary Humanities with an academic concentration in Film or an academic major in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences with an academic concentration in Geography. At several
art schools An art school is an educational institution with a primary focus on the visual arts, including fine art – especially illustration, painting, photography, sculpture, and graphic design. Art schools can offer elementary, secondary, post-second ...
and
liberal arts colleges A liberal arts college or liberal arts institution of higher education is a college with an emphasis on undergraduate study in liberal arts and sciences. Such colleges aim to impart a broad general knowledge and develop general intellectual ca ...
, an academic concentration serves a similar function to an
academic minor {{Unreferenced, date=May 2019 An academic minor is a college or university student's declared secondary academic discipline during their undergraduate studies. As with a major, the college or university in question lays out a framework of require ...
at other universities, that is an academic discipline outside of the student's academic major in which they take a number of classes. At Brown University and
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
, however, the term "concentration" refers simply to the major field. At the doctoral studies level, an academic major or major field refers to a student's primary focus within their degree program while a minor or minor field refers to their secondary focus. For example, a doctoral student studying history might pursue their degree in history with a major field in war and society and a minor field in postcolonial studies.


Impacted majors

An impacted major is a major for which more students apply for than the school can accommodate, a classic example of demand exceeding supply. When that occurs, the major becomes "impacted" and so is susceptible to higher standards of admission. For example, suppose that a school has minimum requirements are
SAT The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schol ...
s of 1100 and a
GPA Grading in education is the process of applying standardized measurements for varying levels of achievements in a course. Grades can be assigned as letters (usually A through F), as a range (for example, 1 to 6), as a percentage, or as a numbe ...
of 3.0. If a person applies to an impacted major, the school can raise the minimum requirements as much as needed to weed out the students that it is unable to accommodate. Because of this, some students may opt to apply to a school as "Undeclared". If in the above example the school implements requirements of SATs of 1300 and a GPA of 3.4 for the impacted major, a student may find it better to apply as "Undeclared" if they meet only the minimum requirements. However, many universities, such as the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, may in turn present more difficult requirements (such as a GPA requirement in certain prerequisite classes) to enter an impacted major even once accepted to the university overall.


See also


References


Further reading

* * *


External links


Index of college majors
at
The Princeton Review The Princeton Review is an education services company providing tutoring, test preparation and admission resources for students. It was founded in 1981. and since that time has worked with over 400 million students. Services are delivered by 4,0 ...

College major profile
at
The College Board The College Board is an American nonprofit organization that was formed in December 1899 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) to expand access to higher education. While the College Board is not an association of colleges, it runs a ...
{{Academic degrees Higher education in Canada Higher education in the United States School terminology