Overspecialization is when a person works in an excessively narrow

occupation Occupation commonly refers to: *Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment *Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, th ...

or scientific field.

Effects

In work

In the workplace,

specialization of labor The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, and nations are endowed with, or acquire specialised capabilities, and ...

is used to divide up the workload in a manner that improves efficiency. However, holders of overspecialized positions tend to perform repetitive jobs, leading to

boredom In conventional usage, boredom, ennui, or tedium is an emotional and occasionally psychological state experienced when an individual is left without anything in particular to do, is listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occu ...

, dissatisfaction, and lower-quality output.

In medicine

The breadth of medical knowledge has expanded vastly since the 1980s. It has been argued that specialization is necessary in medicine to divide up the vast knowledge needed to tackle certain classes of diseases, such as

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

. However, specializing too narrowly leads to poor training;

unnecessary health care Unnecessary health care (overutilization, overuse, or overtreatment) is health care provided with a higher volume or cost than is appropriate. In the United States, where health care costs are the highest as a percentage of GDP, overuse was the ...

; low-quality care, especially in regions with poor medical infrastructure; and knowledge that can rapidly become outdated. Overspecialization detracts from physicians' ability to identify and treat problems in patients. One proposed solution is to use

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

s that streamline the obtaining of necessary information and knowledge, while teaching medicine to a depth that the human mind can handle.

In academia

Modern universities offer a large number of

academic major An academic major is the academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits. A student who successfully completes all courses required for the major qualifies for an undergraduate degree. The word ''major'' (also called ''conce ...

s where students can pursue research. However, overspecialization is considered to be a serious problem in

research Research is "creativity, creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular att ...

because it prevents academics from assessing the relationship between different fields in order to solve certain problems. The

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

system has been criticized for encouraging overspecialization, which can leave students ill-prepared for corporate jobs. John A. Armstrong, "Rethinking the PhD", originally appeared in ''Issues in Science and Technology''.

References

{{Employment Problems in business economics Economic anthropology Criticism of academia Medical education