Mad world: why our complex society demands a rethink of higher education
Natural disasters and climate change, Covid-19, and Black Lives Matter. These are some of today’s “big issues.” On the face of it, they appear to have few similarities. However, there is one striking commonality; they do not fit into neat boxes labelled “science,” “health,” or “politics.” When reading a news story about climate change, “science” tends to be interwoven with government responses, corporate responsibility, related social issues such as rising numbers of climate refugees, and so on. On a day-to-day basis, we are engaging with issues at the intersection of fields such as business, health, economics, law, and politics.
Similarly, our world of work is ever-more complex. Individual careers now cross more sectors than in the baby-boom generation. Then, 41% of workers stayed with their employer for more than 20 years, according to the Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research. Today, CNBC found that 49% of employees report making a “dramatic” career switch to a completely different field. At the same time, technological development and automation are fundamentally reconstituting the workplace. The World Economic Forum even goes so far as to dub these developments the “fourth industrial revolution.”
Success in the labour market, personal development, and the development of a critical mind to play an active role in society. These factors were listed as either “very important” or “rather important” purposes of higher education by 97%, 91%, and 87% respectively of respondents in a Eurobarometer survey. Given that the world of work and current affairs are as complex as ever, why should higher education push us to specialise in narrow fields?
Undergraduate degrees in the UK tend to have one or two “majors” or subjects of specialisation from day one. The most popular degrees are specialised studies such as Business, which had a cohort of 132,815 in 2017/18. In the same year, just 4,750 students opted for combined studies, marking a progressive reduction from 6,165 as of 2013/14, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency. By contrast, the typical degree in the USA is a four-year bachelor, during which students develop a broad-based knowledge amongst a selection of vastly different subjects before choosing a “major” subject. Essentially, US universities are multidisciplinary for roughly the first two years (students study multiple, but separate subjects) before specialisation.
Still, the US system does not necessarily foster interdisciplinary studies. Whilst the multidisciplinary approach allows one to study different but separate disciplines, the interdisciplinary looks to the intersection of disciplines and synthesises them together. For example, behavioural economics straddles economics and psychology, amongst other disciplines.
Though progress when it comes to interdisciplinary studies is rather slow, educational expert Renate Klaassen notes that it is a “hot topic.” In 2010, King’s College London opened the first and only dedicated Department of Political Economy in the UK. At a time when the Coronavirus crisis has led us to critically analyse many normalised societal practices, it seems an opportune moment to rethink specialised higher education.
A better understanding of our world
At the intersection of disciplines lie many crises and everyday issues. It is with an interdisciplinary lens that both come more sharply into focus. This enhanced understanding can then translate into innovative means to improve society through policy making and crisis management.
The “Nudge” unit was created in 2010 as a part of the UK Cabinet Office, with the brief of applying behavioural science to public policy. Its work has resulted in a 38% reduction in patient referrals to overbooked hospitals due to a crafted pop-up message in GP referral systems, according to the Guardian.
In terms of crisis, Jonathan Gilligan argues that “disasters occur at intersections between human society and processes in natural and built environments,” and disaster management should proceed accordingly. Further, current discourse of the Covid-19 crisis in many countries references a dichotomy between health and the economy. Given the economic benefits of a healthier population, which, notes the McKinsey Institute, provide a stimulus to growth, the relationship between health and economics is clearly more complex than this. How can we understand this relationship, areas where actual trade-offs between health and the economy have to be made, and thus, proceed with more effective solutions to the Covid-19 crisis, if not with an interdisciplinary approach?
Solutions to complex issues may also be found more efficiently with interdisciplinarity. Although a specialised, assembly-line approach increases efficiency when it comes to manufacturing, the opposite can be said for policy making and crisis management. Investigating a given issue across disciplines is likely to require less time and fewer resources in the form of researchers and experts than studies produced by multiple, separate fields.
A better fit for the changing world of work
Inter- and multi- disciplinary studies are also a better fit for our changing world of work. The familiar notion of the career “ladder” is becoming a more complex career “lattice.” Career paths no longer involve merely moving up in one company’s hierarchy, but a multi-directional journey that may involve working across or between multiple disciplines, according to Cathy Benko, the vice-chairman of Deloitte. At the same time, 85% of jobs that will exist in 2030 are forecast by the Institute for the Future to be in brand-new industries. Individuals with a broader knowledge-base are primed to take advantage of these developments to gain a more varied and exciting experience of the world of work and develop a greater range of skills. In this way, employees are also more likely to find and re-find their passions, making for more fulfilling work.
A broader knowledge-base can also go some way to insuring individuals against the potentially devastating effects of automation. Such individuals are better equipped to find new employment in the case that they are displaced from a given industry. An interdisciplinary mindset can also reduce this threat in the first place. Educationist Professor Sir Ken Robinson, notes that “creativity depends on interactions between feeling and thinking, and across different disciplinary boundaries and fields of ideas.” Interdisciplinarity, then, is itself an aspect of creativity. And creativity is something uniquely human.
And in practice?
It makes sense for a shift away from specialised studies to look like a true plurality of options for students.
Though one could choose to study in the US if they were looking for a combination of multidisciplinary and specialised studies, or in the UK if they were looking to specialise, there are many reasons why moving to another country for studies may not be possible or preferable. Additionally, the number of interdisciplinary courses and modules on offer are relatively low. This is not for a lack of demand. The interdisciplinary Politics, Psychology, Law, and Economics (PPLE) Bachelor’s programme at the University of Amsterdam received 4 applications for every place with its launch in 2014.
Choice between interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, or specialised courses takes account of individual differences in interest and skills. Indeed, the 2009 National Student Forum report concluded that many young people want a personalised education with flexibility. Plurality also makes sense for society on the whole. Freeman Dyson famously divided up mathematicians into “frogs” and “birds.” Specialising “frogs” focus on detail and “see only the flowers that grow nearby” whilst the broader-perspective “birds” “fly high in the air and survey broad vistas.” He argued that the combination of both the detail and the general is needed for an aggregate understanding of Mathematics. The same could be said for the issues our society faces today.
A jack of all trades, but a master of none?
The age-old saying “a jack of all trades, but a master of none” may spring to mind when one talks of shifting away from specialised studies. However, even if it means less knowledge in each particular field, there are advantages to a broad base of “trades.” Creative thinking and broader knowledge-bases can protect against automation and allow individuals to take advantage of the creation of new industries and the career lattice.
Certain issues and crises also cross the boundaries of “trades”: think Black Lives Matter, climate change, and Covid-19. To “master” these issues, an interdisciplinary perspective is needed. With a plurality of studies, we can then combine bigger-picture “bird” and more detailed, “frog” perspectives for an enhanced aggregate understanding of our world.
A rethink of specialised higher education can allow us to better navigate changes in the world of work. It can also enhance our understanding of and solutions to problems in our mad world.
