Ned Scott Laff and Scott Carlson, Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn’t Matter—and What Really Does (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025).

Andrew S. Hanks, Shengjun Jiang, Xuechao Qian, Bo Wang, Bruce A. Weinberg, “Do double majors face less risk? An analysis of human capital diversification,” NBER Working Paper Series, Working Paper 32095, January 2024

Many, many students arrive at university with a hyperspecialized mindset focused on majoring in a single subject, one that will confer job-ready skills that they can then take with them into the labor market where they will be quickly hired and handsomely remunerated.  While this seems like a winning strategy, I would call this a “brittle education.”  A brittle structure is one that is hard but is liable to break or shatter easily.  On the surface, it appears sturdy, but this hides its underlying fragility.  The nature of the ever-changing job market—even before the disruptions AI will inflict upon the economy—makes such an approach to undergraduate education brittle and fragile. 

Focusing one’s education exclusively on a single major is a kind of epistemological monoculture, and can be as potentially ruinous as agricultural or economic monoculture.  Monoculture means a system dominated by a single element, or the elements in that system are marked by homogeneity. One problem with monocultures is that they often lack resiliency in the face of some challenge; because they are not diversified, monocultures are often vulnerable to threats or shocks. 

Consider the data on “underemployment.” Strada Education Foundation reports that “only about half of bachelor’s degree graduates secure employment in a college-level job within a year of graduation.” [https://stradaeducation.org/report/talent-disrupted/] Underemployment means being employed in a position that is beneath a graduate’s training, or being in a position for which they are overqualified, suggesting a misalignment between training and employment.  High rates of underemployment is one symptom of a brittle, hyper-disciplinary approach to undergraduate education.

Nassim Taleb has coined the term “anti-fragility” to refer to the ability of a system to withstand shocks; anti-fragile systems even strengthen and thrive from these shocks. How might we design an undergraduate education to be resilient and antifragile?

The authors of a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggest one strategy for building a resilient education.  They argue that there has been little study or interest in the idea of the “diversification of human capital.”  In the same way a financial advisor would council a diversified portfolio, balanced to weather any unforeseen economic shocks, perhaps we should be advising students to develop a diversified cognitive portfolio. 

The authors focus their lens on students who were double majors in college—those who eschewed a single, hyperspecialized major—using this group as an exemplar of human capital diversification. They then “[estimated] shocks to earnings using deviations of earnings from expected (i.e., mean) levels based on geography, time, and major.” The researchers showed “that a diversified portfolio of human capital, in the form of a double major, is associated with lower sensitivity to earnings shocks. Our baseline estimates show that double majors experience 56% less risk than similar single majors.” To be clear, this is not the same as avoiding underemployment, but it does signal that those with a double major are better able to cope with economic shocks.  “We hypothesize that double majors possess a wider range of knowledge and skills than single majors and that this diversified set of human capital is a buffer against earnings shocks.”

Interestingly, the researchers discern two types of double majors: “local,” where the two majors are cognate disciplines, residing close to each other, such as English and History, or Finance and Accounting; and “global,” where the two majors stretch from two different parts of the university, like business and theatre.  “Our estimates indicate that while local double majors are shielded against shocks, global double majors are even more protected.” In my book, “Alternative Universities,” I described a Polymath University, where students triple major in three disparate disciplines—like history, finance and art, or philosophy, physics and dance.  This is the approach we are encouraging at Polymath University [https://www.polymathu.org/], which we believe will offer graduates an anti-fragile, resilient education. 

Ned Scott Laff and Scott Carlson argue that many colleges and universities struggle to connect students’ intellectual interests with career pathways, focusing instead on checking degree requirements. The authors argue that traditional advising fails to account for students’ deeper aspirations, leading to “empty college degrees” that do not easily translate into meaningful employment. The real opportunity lies in bridging students’ hidden intellectualism with the hidden job market. Gerald Graff argued that the things that interest students–and these need not be academic subjects, but things like sports or hobbies or volunteering—can be the basis for the field of study a student could pursue at college.  That is, a student’s hidden intellectualism needn’t align with the disciplinary boxes into which the modern university is organized (and in fact I would say these rarely align). Identifying and listening for a student’s hidden intellectualism is key to helping them see the connections between their interests, the intellectual resources on a campus and potential career options.

They define the hidden job market as jobs that are not formally and publicly advertised, learned about via word-of-mouth or through social networks. Universities could do a better job advising students by revealing this hidden job market and aligning it with a student’s hidden intellectualism.  

Drawing on the Individual Plans of Study program at Illinois that Laff helped develop, the authors favor an approach to undergraduate education they call “Field of Study.”  Rather than squeezing into a major—and perhaps a smattering of minors to accompany it—students should be permitted to define and pursue a wicked multidisciplinary problem of deep interest to them, and designing a degree program based on this wicked problem. 

The Field of Study method begins by helping students identify their hidden intellectual interests, encouraging them to articulate not just what they want to do, but why. Students then identify those professionals on and off campus who are already engaged in their areas of interest, from whom they gather insights into necessary skills and experiences. Next, they translate these findings into learning opportunities, uncovering unexpected pathways. This process shifts students from merely following a major to actively designing their own Field of Study. Ultimately, this method trains students to approach their education and careers with adaptability, building networks and cultural capital along the way. “Essentially,” the authors conclude, “[students] become agile learners.” (40-41)

If designed well, a Field of Study would probably traverse several academic disciplines, and would appear to be the opposite of an epistemological monoculture.  But if not designed carefully, Field of Study could lead to another form of hyperspecialization, just as rigid and inflexible as that encouraged by the current academic major system. 

Is our current system of academic majors—many of which were formed in the late 19^th century—up to the educational and workforce development challenges of the mid-21^st century? 

David J. Staley is a higher education philosopher, strategist, futurist, theorist and designer, and is an Honorary Faculty Fellow in Innovation at CHELIP.  He is the author of Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education and the co-author of Knowledge Towns: Colleges and Universities as Talent Magnets.