Senior Project – ID: Computer Science/Economics – 2013

Are Students More T-Shaped?Julia Duros

Advisors – Prof. Fernandes, Prof. Dvorak

Abstract

Interdisciplinary study benefits college students by giving them perspectives and ways of thinking that are influenced by a variety of disciplines. College administrators thus have a goal of developing programs and requirements that give students an interdisciplinary education, making them more “T-shaped” (broad and deep) rather than merely “I-shaped” (deep). The breadth of courses that students take constitutes part of what it means to be T-shaped. Aside from a student’s major requirements and a few General Education requirements, students choose more than half of their courses as free electives. This project examines one aspect of how students go about choosing those extra courses. I obtained data by scraping all of the college’s course roster pages since 2001. For each student who has graduated since then, information from all of their completed courses is used to evaluate the average student’s level of interdisciplinary study over time. This is measured by the breadth of courses each student took: the number of unique departments represented on their transcript. My results show that students have taken courses in a broader range of departments, thus suggesting they have become more interdisciplinary, or T-shaped.

Method

I first scraped the data from the Union College course roster pages (2001-2012). Then I imported the data into Stata (a statistical software package) to manipulate and analyze it. For each student listed in the course roster pages, I used the following information: class year, major, course information (including departments, term and year). From this, I was able to calculate the student’s total number of courses and number of unique departments taken by the student.

I also ran the analysis using only constant departments (only departments that were offered throughout 2001-2012). This allowed me to control for the increase in the number of departments the college has offered since 2001. I also controlled for changes in the total number of courses that students have taken by calculating a ratio of number of unique departments to total number of courses taken. Furthermore, I researched changes in major requirements for each department since 2001 to account for a possible change in the number of unique departments that students are required to take courses in.

Results & Conclusions

Results show that the average number of unique departments students have taken has increased since the class of 2004. The numbers vary by the student’s major, but all majors follow an increasing trend. After controlling for departments and programs that have existed throughout 2001-2012, the trend in the number of unique departments is still increasing but to a lesser degree. This suggests that the increase in the college’s number of departments and programs contributes to students becoming more interdisciplinary. There is no strong trend in the average ratio of number of unique departments to total number of courses taken. This suggests that students have not chosen to take a bigger portion of their overall courses in a broad range of departments. When looking at changes in major requirements since 2004, there was a slight overall increase, but nothing that would significantly contribute to the increase in the average number of unique departments taken by students.

In summary, I conclude that students have taken a broader range of courses, indicating that they have become more interdisciplinary, or T-shaped (rather than just I-shaped). If the number of departments and number of courses that students took stayed constant since 2001, the “cross-bar” of their T would be shorter than it is today.

Academic Year Biology Comp. Sci. English Poli. Sci. All majors2003-2004 4 3 1 1 2.92004-2005 4 3 1 1 3.02005-2006 5 3 1 1 3.02006-2007 5 3 1 1 3.02007-2008 5 3 1 1 3.02008-2009 5 3 1 1 3.02009-2010 5 3 1 1 3.12010-2011 6 3 1 1 3.12011-2012 6 3 1 1 3.1

Sample Course Roster Page

Number of Required Departments for Specified Major

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 20120

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Average Number of Unique Departments Taken by Students

All departments

Departments in Ex-istence 2001-2012

Class Year

Num

ber o

f Dep

artm

ents

Biology Computer Science

English Political Science

All Majors0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Average Number of Unique Departments Taken by Students, 2004-2012

Major

Num

ber o

f Dep

artm

ents

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 201220%22%24%26%28%30%32%34%36%38%40%

Average Ratio of Unique Departments per Course Taken

Class Year

Ratio

Future Work

Although my work provides meaningful suggestions, there is much more room for work to be done on this subject. For example, taking into account the grades that students received could help further explain their course choices. Work could also be done to explain the increase in the total number of courses taken by students over time (possibilities include number of scholars, number of engineers, and number of students using high school AP credits).