What exactly is an "individualized major"?
Four approaches to doing your own thing in an educational bureaucracy
In a recent post, I examined how an “interdisciplinary” major was constructed at a single university. One thing which surprised me in that process was seeing just how structured it was. Although its structure was different from a traditional major, it still had very clear requirements set down to the student by the institution. It was not, at its heart, student-centered.
This got me thinking about the “individualized” major. It’s easy to confuse it with “interdisciplinary” programs, probably because they both start with the letter “I”. But they’re also both pretty ambiguous. If either one shows up on a resumé, it inspires follow-up questions in a way that biology or accounting majors do not.
So, I decided to learn some more about individualized majors at a range of institutions. And just as a heads up… some of these colleges are going to be uncommon.
Indiana University (is not uncommon)
I am using Indiana, as I often do, as a stand-in for the typical research university. It is very similar to what you’ll see at most institutions. You can think of this as the “default” individualized major program.
The “Individualized Major Program” is housed in the IU College of Arts & Sciences. This is also very typical, as departments in these colleges typically work best for interdisciplinary combination.
A student who wants to complete an individualized major must propose their plan of study to a faculty committee. Students need to have completed at least one semester on campus before they submit this proposal, so they will all have entered college under a standard major plan or entered as an undeclared major.
The individualized major really needs to meet three criteria:
It needs to be meaningfully distinct from existing major programs. This is basically a judgment call from the faculty committee. The intention here is to avoid someone creating a program where they effectively do an existing major but eliminate a few classes they wish to avoid.
It needs to combine significant coursework from at least two departments, one of which must be in the College of Arts and Sciences. The goal here is looking for a balance. It can’t just be 80% of an accounting major with some psychology courses thrown on for flavor.
It must meet the credit requirements of a typical major. This means it must both be as many courses as a normal major and involve as many upper-level credits as would be typical. In contrast to the “interdisciplinary studies” degree, the intention here is to maintain the same level of course rigor as any other major in the College.
As of last semester, there were just 38 students at IU with individualized majors. Remember: that’s out of over 44,000 undergraduates. A little less than half those students had a second, traditional major.
This option is one that relatively few students seem to even consider. Perhaps the stigma around having “individualized major program” on their transcript outweighs any benefits the process might provide? Or perhaps the extra layers of planning and committee approvals are just not worth the effort?
The Johnston Center for Integrative Studies: An Uncommon Bubble
The best way to think about Johnston’s program is that it’s what happens when a traditional university actually takes its individualized major program seriously.
Johnston is an academic unit within the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Redlands, a private university in southern California. In an institution with only 3,000 undergraduates, 200 of them are in this individualized major program.
Students in Johnston begin their academic career in the program. They must apply for admission to Johnston alongside their application to the university. It’s not just their academic home, it’s their home home. Every student in the program lives in dedicated on-campus housing. Additionally, the program faculty and staff work in that same building.
Although Johnston students can enter the program in their first semester, they wait until their sophomore year to produce a graduation plan. This “contract” is a living document that they discuss with a committee of faculty and students before it is approved. It will evolve throughout their time at Redlands, and culminate with a contract review before they’re approved for graduation.
In fact, “contract” is the defining word for this program. It’s mandatory for courses taken inside Johnston (and optional for those outside it) for students to prepare a contract before the course begins. In it, they will set out their reasons for taking the class, their goals, and how they will determine their success. The faculty member will use this contract as the basis of a narrative evaluation of student work. This narrative evaluation serves as a substitute for the traditional letter grade evaluation system.
Before graduation, most Johnston students will serve as teaching assistants for a course that is meaningful to them. The idea is that as they become subject matter experts, they will pass along what they’ve learned to the next generation of Johnston students.
So, how is it that an institution 7% the size of Indiana has an individualized major program five times larger? I think it’s because Johnston has substance, culture, support, and meaningful curricular differences from the rest of the university which surrounds it. Most students won’t want to do an individualized major if it’s effectively “just another major.” Johnston offers a sufficiently unique academic experience, such that it can attract students to Redlands who likely wouldn’t have gone there otherwise.
Bennington College: Individualizing the Disciplines
Bennington College, seen above looking as Vermontish as it possibly can, also expects its individualized major students to form a plan. The difference is that it’s universal.
In some sense, every one of the 900 undergraduates at Bennington has an individualized major because Bennington students don’t have majors. They have Plans.
Like Johnston students, Bennington students all spend their first year on campus without a declared graduation plan. They are expected to try course work in different disciplines and see what resonates. Then, in their sophomore year, every student is required to produce a graduation Plan (always capitalized).
Throughout the last three years, students meet with an individual faculty advisor, as well as a faculty Plan committee. Students provide written updates on their achievements and any changes to their goals, culminating in a senior essay that summarizes how they crafted their own path to graduation.
It’s worth noting that Bennington does not have the disciplinary balance requirements of other programs. If you’re here to study computer science and you only want to study computer science, no one will stop you. Since students are not responsible for major “tracks,” they can decide how they want to achieve their goals, as long as the Plan committee supports it.
Some students will focus on a single discipline, while others will sample widely. Many students will end up with what is, effectively, a double major. The lack of universal requirements makes that kind of disciplinary depth possible in multiple directions. While it’s possible for students to major in “nostalgia,” as the website indicates, it’s much more common for students to effectively reproduce more standard major curricula, while having more ownership over the specifics of their academic trajectory.
Additionally, every Bennington student is required to complete a professional internship every year. The idea is that students are expected to broaden themselves in their academic and career plans throughout their time in college.
College of the Atlantic: Thematic Individuality
If Bennington allows great freedom to select from disciplinary categories, College of the Atlantic tries to ignore those categories as much as it can.
CoA is located in Bar Harbor, Maine. It is adjacent to Acadia National Park and, since its inception, has defined itself by a quest for sustainability and a connection with the natural world. As such, there is only one major: Human Ecology. No matter what they study, every student will graduate with that degree.
With fewer than 400 undergraduates, CoA does not support the bureaucratic infrastructure for a range of departments. Instead, seeing every area of study as being, at its core, connected to the relations of humans and the world, they expect every course on campus to be interdisciplinary.
Interestingly, they do require more robust universal degree requirements than the other uncommon colleges I profiled today. In addition to the mandatory introductory course for new students, everyone must take courses in writing, quantitative reasoning, and history. They must also complete at least two courses in all three of the main domains of study at CoA: art/design, science/math, and social science/humanities. Students must also complete a writing portfolio, community service, and a culminating senior project of their own design in order to graduate.
Because of the more robust degree requirements and the total absence of a disciplinary or College of Arts and Sciences obligation, CoA also dispenses with the committee approval format present in the other programs. Students have more requirements to meet, and they confirm with an advisor on how they’ll meet them. But they do not need to revalidate their plans with another group to demonstrate that it is sufficiently broad or deep or unique.
So, where would you go?
There is no one way to design an individualized major program. That, perhaps, goes without saying, given the name. But each of them solves for a different problem. The question is which problem seems most important to you.
Indiana allows for educational edge cases to still find a path to graduation. Their extra support (and expense) is minimal, but it’s a way to keep them enrolled and engaged. Its low support matches its low participation.
Johnston may offer students the best of both worlds. They have a robust support system for an individualized plan, but they also have access to a broader, traditional university. But it’s a cultural bubble within that broader campus.
Bennington makes the individualized major culture universal by making it required. But because it retains an emphasis on traditional academic disciplines, most students will produce familiar plans. Still, the fact that those plans aren’t handed to students requires them to take more ownership over them and do more reflection on their success.
College of the Atlantic tries to dispense with disciplinary structures as much as they can by only allowing students to graduate with a human ecology major. The imposition of structured requirements and absence of the committee system gives students bureaucratic autonomy to make their own plan without worrying about what faculty will think or how the name they give their plan will be perceived. Building toward the senior project makes it perhaps more active and less reflective than other programs.
So, how standalone should an individualized major be? Why is it that 400 students would go to a fully individualized program in rural Maine, but only 40 would do an individualized program at a Big Ten university? And, most importantly, what kind of program best meets the needs of its students?
-Matt