Should joint degrees be avoided?

[RankleTaxi]

I often read comments that suggest joint degrees should be avoided because they involve more work than single. Is this actually true? Obviously they can cut down on choice as you will probably have more core modules. Do fewer people apply, making it easier to get an offer? Does it look like you have a broad skill base or you do not have a deep understanding? DS is looking at potentially combining Maths and Music of which there are a handful of specific courses to apply to. Aware of Liberal Arts etc, but not keen on overall structure.

They do tend to be more work, and depending on the uni can sometimes lead to timetable clashes which are a pain. You study to the same depth, but obviously fewer topics. This generally isn't a problem if you want to continue studies or work in a related field, as you will be specialising in a couple of areas by then.

(I did a joint honours degree, continued to get a Ph.D. pretty much in the 'overlap' area, and am now a schoolteacher where I have taught both subjects over the course of my career, so it worked out for me.)

I did joint honours (a language plus a useful business type subject) and found I had more opportunities to tailor my course to modules I enjoyed the most.

It was the same number of credits, whether you did joint or single, we did have fewer compulsory modules than the single course. That worked better for me, as I didn’t enjoy the literature elements of the language degree, so got to skip them.

I also met more people across two courses than I would have done.

I did a joint degree in two languages, it was more work than doing one but i don’t regret it. The language element was the same as single but I studied fewer literature/cultural modules.

They can be more balancing of different subject matter, and involve more research due to separate topics, but overall they are useful as it gives you two different sets of knowledge, vs one single subject degree.

I did a joint degree in music and education as I couldn't bare the thought of being with teachers all the time 🤣.

Had a much better social life with the music lot!

Mine is a bit different though as it then had a full year of teaching to give me qts. Fun though!!

Yes. I do think they are more work but then that’s worth it for many. My DD did joint MFL. Two languages is obviously more work but it says more about you and gives you more skills. Lots of skills complement each other and employers do know students with joint honours have done more work. Often the universities give first dibs of options to single honours though. However DD got what she wanted but some modules are very popular. so get your option choices in early!

Im not sure about music and maths. It’s well known these subjects are linked but I would worry the breadth of the maths degree would be slightly curtailed. Music would still be pretty full on I think. Most unis offer high level music for non music grads. I’m not surprised it’s difficult to find and I would say go for it if he really wants to. However think about what he wants to do afterwards. Brilliant for teaching but is it ok when competing for other jobs? Maths grads are sought after so having music as well might make no difference at all. I would try and suss it out though. It will be more work though!

I worked at a London university and they did away with joint degrees many years ago in order to improve the standard of education.

By the way, there are joint honours, and there are joint honours...
At most unis, these courses are 50% one, and 50% the other. But at some there are actually special courses just for the JH programme, which require detailed knowledge of both subjects. Mine was like that, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world! So it's worth checking the course descriptions.

@mdh2020
Quite frankly that’s what you might do at a lower ranking university. And up the number of firsts. It’s odd not to find huge numbers of joint courses at the top universities. It’s very odd to offer none and I expect they didn’t teach MFL or PPE. MFL is better as joint. Very bright DC need the challenge too. Hence Oxbridge has plenty to choose from!

@PhotoDad
No. They are not 50/50. You cannot do 50% of a MFL and get to degree standard. You do fewer options in each MFL but the total is more work.

@TizerorFizz I agree with you. I said upthread that they are more work! Sorry I was unclear. What I meant was that at many places, you end up doing half of your modules/classes/units from Subject A, and half from Subject B.

I did (roughly) 40% from A, 40% from B, and 20% as a special "just for people doing A&B" module.

More work for lots of different reasons.

The courses seem to be a collection of modules from both Music and Maths, with some compulsory, esp Maths in Year 1. There do not appear to be special classes for the joint course, although Edinburgh and Leeds offer Mathematics of Music modules, but I think these are available to all.

Re Joint degrees and standards.....too many top quality institutions offering joint degrees for this to be a genuine concern.

No. There won’t be special classes. You do fewer optional modules but core in both.

Not my experience, but I suspect it depends on the university! It certainly still happens in some places.

@TizerorFizz I've checked and the course structures are still the same at my old uni (Oxford). There's a special "overlap" class for those doing Joint Honours.

In my case, I studied Physics & Philosophy. The "Phys/Phil" students (all 12 of us) had special modules on the philosophy of physics, which weren't available to people doing any other combination because they needed knowledge of both.

I imagine that Oxford isn't the only place that does this, but I might be wrong there!

DD didn’t have them. MFL don’t really overlap. Oxford might well be different. Most courses I’ve seen do the core subjects and then options. Some options might lean towards one or the other subject but how would you do this for music and maths? History and Politics: yes. However I’ve not been aware of special classes being organised.

To reply to the bit in your post about it being easier to get a place as fewer students apply, I would not expect this to be the case. I would be surprised if there is a fixed number of places set aside for joint degrees in the same way that there are for single degrees. More likely he would count towards the normal number of students as half a person.

I was coming on to say yes I think they are really good. Hard work of course if it’s something you become professionally qualified in like Architecture & Landscape Architecture.

Major/ Minors in related fields are also really lovely. I did one myself.

Maths and music do strike me as an odd combination. But then I admit I don’t know much about music or maths so perhaps that’s just my lack of understanding 🤷‍♀️

My DS is doing Financial Maths, which is kind of a "joint" degree between Maths and Business (economics, finance & accounting). He says he wouldn't have done it had he known how it would be run.

For a start, he doesn't feel any sense of "belonging" to either department as it's very close to 50:50 between the two depts (slightly weighted towards Maths to get "Maths" in the degree title!). He says that the Maths students tend to be a close knit group as they're doing Maths most of the time so have far more "common" lectures etc so they're a difficult group of people to get in with. Likewise, his "business" lectures are also the same as the business/economics/accounting students do more common lectures, so again, they're a hard group to get in with. So, basically, most of his lectures, seminars etc he's the odd one out. He says very few students are doing the Financial Maths degree, hence very few people doing the full suite of the same lectures as he is doing.

The course admin is also poor, i.e. clashing lectures, clashing exams, etc as the two depts don't seem to liaise with each other. On one particular day, he had 3 exams on the same day, 2 of which clashed directly so he had to do that in the evening. Both depts had previously said that they'd only do a maximum of 2 exams per week over 6 weeks to help spread the burden of revision and stress of exams, but that didn't apply to joint degrees.

None of the above issues really manifested themselves in his first year (20/21) as it was the covid year and everything, literally everything was online for the full year, so he didn't really have the same problems. But certainly, 21/22, his second year, he expected things to be better, but really, they weren't.

As for module choice, he basically had none in the Maths sections, all modules being compulsory, and unfortunately, most of those were what he regards as the boring and "hard" maths, i.e. the theoretical stuff, whereas he prefers real life Maths. Even the probability and statistics modules were more "theory" rather than real life, and unlike either the Maths or Business students, the financial maths students didn't have any option of doing any computer-related maths at all, no programming, etc., as there's simply no space in the module choices. All his options are within the business half.

Obviously, a lot of the above is irrelevant as OP refers to Maths and music, but I think the maths points may be relevant as the OP's DS is doing a Maths degree, so may find that module choices in Maths are pretty limited -definitely something they'd need to check before committing, i.e. just how flexible are the module choices!

DS is doing history alone having not got the grades for his first choice which was History and Politics I think. He is pleased at the way it has turned out as he feels he has been able to immerse himself in his subject.

I agree with pp that there may be limited module choice for students doing a joint degree. It's because of the difficulty of timetabling both subjects.

I don’t think that’s the case everywhere. Look at History and Politics at Oxford. It has a big array of options. I think where a combination is a hybrid that’s a relatively new course, there might be issues. You could argue that joint subjects are worth it when tried snd tested.

As others have indicated there is huge variety between unis so best to check out the detailed course structure and experiences of recent / current students.

DD is going to do a 2 languages MFL degree - 1 language she has an A Level in and 1 will be from scratch (ab initio) They are explicit that those starting ab initio will have a lot more work to do as they have to be at the same level at the end of year 1 as those who had the A Level. There is an expectation you do lots of work in the summer before starting and have a week before term of intensive training with an exam to set the students. The reading list is enormous and they split the students into four groups with the beginners having extra classes.

She heard from older friends that those doing a joint degree that was two languages had it easier than those doing say French and History due to the better administration as you were only dealing with one department. I've heard this from a range of different unis.

Yes, my point was simply that the devil's in the details, and that each course at each uni is likely to be different.

I can easily imagine a "mathematics of music" module which requires relatively deep knowledge of both, moreso than a general introductory course. The mathematics behind the harmonics of strings and wind instruments is only about A-level standard, but once you get into things like even-tempering of keyboards, things get very difficult, very quickly. Essentially, an A-sharp isn't the same physical frequency as a B-flat, so set-pitch instruments need compromises which don't sound awful. The details easily outstrip my own knowledge!

Juja, where is your Dd going?
Dc is looking at MFL for 2023 and has two language A levels, which he wants to do the joint honours course in, so maybe he'd have a relatively easy first year...