During a recent doom-scrolling session, I came across an Instagram post which listed the majors and alma maters of three prominent CEOs in the financial sector: George Soros, Jamie Dimon, and Stephen Schwarzman. According to the post, Schwarzman, who now leads one of the largest financial institutions in the world and has an estimated net worth of $38.8 billion, graduated from Yale with a degree in Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology. Soros, on the other hand, graduated from LSE with a BSc in Philosophy. Scrolling through the comments, I found users were shocked by this apparent revelation. How could it be that Schwarzman and Soros, two leading figures in the financial industry, studied psychology and philosophy?

The level of surprise in the comments may be taken as symptomatic of a growing tendency to think narrowly about the relationship between one’s occupation and academic study. Today, the degree you do is more often seen as a dividing line than a door opener, insofar as it defines the work you can do. So, if you want a job in finance, you study finance or economics; if you want to be a publisher, you study English, and so on. The idea that someone who studies History can enter finance, or that a historian can be an economist, seems both unlikely and optimistic.

"It seems absurd to think that young adults must question if there is any value to reading fiction, exploring history, studying philosophy, and so on"

Students and young adults today can’t be blamed for holding this view. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of foraying into the job market, you’ll know that it’s fiercely competitive, and hiring managers have become exceptionally narrow-minded when it comes to setting requirements for candidates. “A degree in a related field” is often the first essential requirement, filtering out from the very beginning candidates who might have pursued a different pathway at university. After all, what chance do you stand as a History student applying for a role in finance, when you are competing against students who have studied finance or economics and already possess a foundation in the required skills and knowledge?

This environment precipitates to academia, where it encourages a narrow-minded view of both academia and employment, where employees are seen as specialists who can perform a particular set of functions, and academia as the factory which churns out these specialists. This emphasis on specialisation comes at the cost of producing well-rounded individuals who can draw inspiration from interdisciplinary thinking. More worryingly, it contributes to the devaluation of what are seen as “non-essential” or “Mickey Mouse” degrees, namely, the arts and humanities. 

"Overlooking the value of interdisciplinarity results in a way of thinking that draws needless borders between degree subjects"

Internet forums and Instagram comment sections are one thing, but I was shocked to find this attitude at Cambridge. One friend, who studies politics, insists that there’s no reason to study literature or read fiction. He argues that the comprehension and analytical skills an English degree trains can be acquired through the study of non-humanities degrees, and that the same messages and meanings we find in Kafka, Dostoyevsky, or Camus can be learned through non-fiction texts. Another friend, who studies physics, asserts that philosophy and literature are useless degrees, failing to acknowledge the profound influence of those disciplines on present-day scientific study.

These attitudes reveal a narrow view of the purpose of academic study. While there are degrees which are designed to teach you the specific skills and knowledge needed for specialist professions, like those in the fields of medicine, law, or engineering, there are also many degrees which equip students with valuable skills that have cross-disciplinary application. To think that a degree is meant only as a starter course for a related career is, as Max La Bouchardiere writes, to push the idea that universities are conveyor belts towards a career.

In the hallowed halls of academia, overlooking the value of interdisciplinarity results in a way of thinking that draws needless borders between degree subjects, between STEM and the humanities, logical and creative, useful and useless. More broadly, it limits the mind and deprives individuals of the wealth of knowledge and inspiration that become available when one broadens their perspectives. 

In order to be more well-rounded as individuals, we must be open to immersing ourselves in and learning from various disciplines, not just those which are immediately useful or relevant to our immediate careers or daily activities. Yet, the work to undo this mindset is not the sole responsibility of students or those in academia. If coming generations of students are to really adopt an interdisciplinary way of thinking, they must be able to do so with the confidence that their choice of degree will not be a limiting factor in future career opportunities. For that to happen, employers must also begin to see the value of interdisciplinarity.

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