Academic Specialization, Double Majoring, and the Threat to Breadth In Academic Knowledge

• In Event: 3429 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 12. Higher Education: Majors and Academic Identities

Abstract

We examine the relationship between academic specialization and student exposure to a range of academic domains of knowledge. We use a concentration measure—the Herfindahl-Hirschman index—to investigate if students who choose single majors or double major are more or less concentrated in nine domains of knowledge most postsecondary institutions consider to be the intellectual core of a liberal-arts general education. Our results, based on an analysis of 240 undergraduate transcripts, indicate that—relative to single majoring—choosing similar majors (hyper-specialization) significantly concentrates student learning and choosing very different majors (hypo-specialization) leads to more breadth.

Authors

• Whitney Nicole Laster Pirtle, University of California - Merced

• Ashley Noel Metzger, University of California, Merced