It’s one of the first questions you’re asked when meeting new people; the major has become a part of our outermost identity. Much like a culture or shared interest, you eventually become accustomed to the community it comes with, as much of your time is spent in classes and with the people in your classes.

Identifying with a major limits yourself to being what you believe someone in your major should be. Instead of studying to be what you want to be, you must follow a path set by the university, filled with classes that range from interesting and relevant to boring and arbitrary. As students progress through their major, their excitement for their studies becomes continuously weighed down by classes they have no desire to study for. The result of the class is broadened knowledge of the field of study, but it also burns students out, especially when the class is difficult and requires a lot of study time. More importantly, we believe that we can only attain careers in our major and no intersectionality exists between fields of study.

Over time, we begin to accept the fact that some parts of our major just suck. However, there is a big difference between a hard class that’s necessary for your career and one that has no bearing on your future. A civil engineer needs to take calculus because it’s foundational to their field, but if they want to study how infrastructure relates to maintaining power in government, they may elect to drop a couple of higher-end classes in civil engineering. Then if they drop that class that means they fail the major and cannot graduate. Thus, students are put in a box and lose the ability to self-determinate. Graduation requirements force students to continue with their major even if some of the classes they must take have no personal value.

Of course, majors still have their uses, especially if people are at college simply to get a high-paying job in their industry. They go to college, get the skills they need to succeed in the workforce, graduate and have a degree to show employers they’re ready for work. That’s completely understandable, but many people have interests that involve more than one major and cannot develop these interests because majors force you to pick just one or two subjects. As someone interested in studying rhetoric, I can’t pick just English and communications as majors; I need to study political science, psychology, history and a handful of courses from other majors as well. Thankfully, the bachelor’s degree with independent concentration (BDIC) track allows me to accomplish that goal, but it took a lot of searching before I found out that your major doesn’t really matter.

Employers don’t care what words are scribbled onto your diploma. They barely care about what college you went to. Sure, Harvard University looks nice on a resume, but what really matters is the skills you can provide to employers. Everyone is coming out of college with an English degree or an engineering degree, so what separates you from everyone else? Unless you can fill a niche with some unique skill, you’re just a replaceable employee.

Thus, majors must go. If one desires to follow through a specific path for a STEM degree or a liberal arts degree, there are advisors to put them on those paths. If one wants to branch out, there are also advisors for those paths. Majors have depersonalized the college experience, making it easier to facilitate an influx of students and increasing profit while limiting costs. What once was a place to pursue intellectual curiosities has turned into a factory to churn out higher-skilled workers for a more developed economy. Dividing ourselves into labels gives us tunnel vision, blinding ourselves from the possibilities a college education can get us.

William Fry can be reached at [email protected].