I am extremely lucky that Robert enjoys exploring certain useless hypothetical possibilities as much as I do. The other day, when we were talking about things related to my obsessive consideration of the educational enterprise, I wondered whether one reason Rice undergrads so commonly have double-majors while students at state universities (it seems to me) generally have one major and possibly a minor is that state schools have more stringent core curriculum requirements, leaving fewer hours available to pursue another major.
For example, state universities in Texas are legislatively mandated to require students to take certain government and history courses and have other university-specific requirements as well. Rice has extremely limited requirements outside of the student's major. There are three areas (humanities, social science, and science/engineering) and in addition to meeting the requirements of your major, you need only take 6 hours in each of the other two areas. For instance, a chemistry major will need to take 6 hours of humanities and 6 hours of social science. People will often do this by taking the two-semester "huma," "soci," or "nsci" (pronounced: Nazi) interdisciplinary sequence created specifically for non-majors.
So this raised the question: if I had attended UT, would I have been able to be a psychology and economics double-major in a standard four-year degree plan? Robert and I looked it up.
I would have needed to take two additional courses to graduate in four years, which is doable since I only took 12 hours each semester of my senior year instead of 15. I would have needed to add economic statistics and vector calculus. This assumes that I can use economics as the "minor" for my psychology major and vice versa; I don't know whether that's allowed. In any event, I would have had to substitute 9 of my electives for other required classes, as follows:
Do not take:
English 101,
Religious Studies 202 (Atheism and Its Critics),
Psychology 202 (Social Psychology) -- wait, but this was my interest area for grad school!,
Psychology 231 (Industrial-Organizational Psychology),
Sociology 203 (Intro to Sociology),
Sociology 386 (Sexuality and the Social Order),
Ling 200 (Language),
Accounting 305 (Financial Accounting),
Econ 445 (Managerial Economics)
Instead, take:
UGS 302 or 303, which I don't even know what it is,
Rhetoric 306 (introduction to writing and argumentation),
Government 310L (Introduction to American Government),
Government 312L (The Politics of the US and Mexico),
1 course in US history,
1 course in Texas history,
1 course in visual or performing arts,
1 more course in German,
1 more course in science.
Ugh. So it appears that it is possible (subject to my understanding of the requirements) that I could double-major in these fields at UT but it would not be nearly as fun.
Another hypothetical scenario: Both Robert and I would be qualified to teach high school math in the state of North Carolina, since only 24 hours in the subject is required. (I will have 27 hours of math by the end of this semester; Robert has something approproaching a gazillion, to put this in rigorous mathematical terminology). It's interesting that the hours do not have to come from specific coursework; I would be much better prepared to teach high school math if I had taken a modern algebra and a geometry course, for instance, rather than linear algebra and differential equations. This being said, I do feel that I could teach at the level of high school math without those courses.
Another way to be qualified to teach a subject involves passing the Praxis exams from ETS (the GRE people). The ETS website has sample questions for each of the roughly 69 subjects they offer. Robert and I tested ourselves against a bunch of these tests and found that we were able to individually get a surprisingly high percentage of the questions right in fields where we have zero to very little educational experience - fields like agriculture, biology (Robert moreso than I), business education, and physical education. Of course we killed psychology and economics, and fields like math are straightforward. But even our scores in theater were much less dire than I would have expected. These tests must be pretty easy. I mean, yeah, we are overall knowledgeable people and multiple-choice test-taking ability comes into play, but seriously, I know almost nothing about agriculture.
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6 comments:
Sadly, I happen to know that you can double major at UT by choosing the other field as a minor. However, I think you need 36 extra hours. I know you need 36 extra hours for a second degree, but because you can only earn one Bachelor of Arts and back then both majors were technically Bachelor of Arts degrees, and you can get only one BA degree, you might not have needed the additional 36 hours. Nowadays they have a BS in Psychology, so you could earn two degrees if you chose that and a BA in economics.
Back then, UGS 302 and 303 didn't exist; instead you needed, I believe, a second social science in a different field. So you could have had one of the courses on your list after all. (And the UGS courses are interdisciplinary courses, so you may have found one that is almost as fun as one of the ones on your list.)
Plenty of people at UT do get double majors, but most of them stay longer (or do summer school) to do so. The academic advisers seem to think that a second (and third) major is generally overkill.
There are a lot of options for the GOV 312L and the two American history courses, but they probably don't match up with the courses on your list.
My private school required:
* 2 UHUM courses - one in ancient literature (mine had readings from the Bible and ancient Mesopotamian texts, for example) and one in modern literature (mine included Pascal and St. Augustine, so their definition of modern was quite relative)
* 1 UHIST - world history
* 2 social science
* 2 math or science
* 1 writing course, which most people tested out of (I tried to say "out of which most people tested," but that doesn't quite work either)
* 2 courses in the creative arts
* 2 PE courses
* pass a swimming test.
My psychology major required intro, experimental, statistics, four additional elementary courses chosen from five areas with two courses from each of two areas, and one elective. None of mine were upper-division.
This left a lot of room for electives, even though all our courses (except PE) were 4 hours, so we took only four courses per semester.
I think maybe only one of my friends there double majored, though. Maybe half of them graduated early instead.
I think that if you have a double major you don't need a minor. I know that's the case at Metro (just checked the catalog and it says that the second major fulfills the minor requirement).
At Metro, you have to take a number of hours chosen from different categories, though there are a variety of courses you can satisfy most of them with. The requirements are
Level 1
6 hours of composition (a specific sequence of two classes)
3 hours of mathematics (various lower-level classes)
3 hours of communication (generally the second or third - I forget which - semester of one of the foreign languages)
Level 2
3 hours of history (plenty of choices)
6 hours of arts & letters (ditto)
6 hours of social science (ditto)
6 hours of natural science (ditto)
In addition, 3 hours of the above need to satisfy the "multicultural" requirement, which means you could take a class line Chicano/a Literature, or a women's studies class, or (like me) American Immigration History.
That's about 11 classes, vs. I guess the 4 for Rice. (Rice has a composition class too, but we tested out of it, as I imagine most do.)
Oh, and following up to what Debbie said, you don't get two degrees at Metro as a result of having two majors - you just have two majors and one degree. Getting a second degree has more requirements and I don't think many people bother.
Debbie, thanks for the additional information. I find the requirement for the government and history classes annoying, but it's not UT's fault. The weirdest part about your school is the swimming test; that's an oddly specific requirement. I forgot to say that we needed 2 PE courses also.
Tam, those requirements seem pretty reasonable. Did you take the two-course composition sequence or were you able to transfer credits for that? I had forgotten about your history class.
I happened to be looking at that part of the catalog today (on a quest for requirements that might be hard to code into our current degree audit system) and learned that you need only 24 extra hours for a second degree and no extra hours for an extra major within the same degree.
Yep, swimming. I wonder if it was a sign of the times (1980) rather than my school in particular.
Answer: sign of the times. Interestingly, one can now meet the PE requirement with either two classes or by passing a physical fitness test.
What's oddest to me is that I was able to graduate without taking a single upper-division course. (In fact, I think I did take a single upper-division course or maybe two.) We didn't even use that term (or "semester hours"--we paid by the semester not by the semester hour).
Debbie, I didn't catch the bit about the lack of upper-division courses; that is strange. Everybody now seems very attuned to the difference between lower- and upper-division classes to meet requirements.
At Rice we talked about "hours" rather than "semester hours" I believe, and we also were not on a pay-by-the-hour system.
IIRC, my sister's school was on a quarter system and I still don't understand how that worked (works; they still do it).
Thankfully kids now have the option of passing the PE req through classwork and not demonstrating mastery of anything; most of my cohort would have been in trouble on such an exacting standard. (Tam, at least, could swim.)
I took swimming at Rice, and the teacher told us that back in the good old days, Rice had a swimming test as well, and if you couldn't pass it you had to take swimming. He was in favor of this for anti-drowning purposes.
I think all students at Metro pay by the hour.
Sally, since I was taking classes at HCC (Houston Community College) at some point, I had taken the first composition course and was able to transfer credits, but I still had to take the second semester at Metro. (The first semester at both schools is basically essay writing, and the second semester is about writing a research paper.)
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