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[jds2006]

For the sake of wising me up in preparation for discussions on my campus, can anybody tell me whether you can recall a pop-culture/academic synergy like the recent boom of interest in Forensics. (My guess, for instance, was that there may have been a post-Indiana Jones archeology boom.) And did that boom lead to longlasting effects? (More journalism majors after Woodward and Bernstein?)

[bibliologos]

Absolutely right about the post-Indiana Jones archaeology boom.  It led to a huge increase in archaeology majors where I did my undergrad.  Don't know if it was sustained or not.  Turns out that archaeology requires a lot of boring detail work!! (I would guess that forensics does too.)

[hiringchair]

I've been in job placement at my cc for the last 20 years and I taught career planning until a few years ago.  I probably have these out of order, but here are some of the trends I've seen.

Early 1980s, Love Boat was on and everybody wanted to be a cruise director.  Later in the decade, Emergency 911 and similar shows created a boom for our EMT/Paramedic programs.  Police work came back in to vogue around then, too.  Oddly, nobody wanted to be a disco DJ!!

Through much of the 90s, business was probably our most popular major, but I can't recall any TV shows that made this look like a sexy option.  Paralegal was popular, maybe L.A. Law had something to do with that?

Now our "hottest" majors are anything in allied health, (maybe "ER-effect"?) and police and fire.  These all took huge leaps after 911. 

I see lots of student who want to be CSIs, now, too, but they have no clue what the work is really about.  They act like they don't believe me when I tell them that no police department on earth actually has all the "toys" they see on that show.  If they're really interested, I send them to see a fellow at my state's Dept. of Justice lab.  When they hear his recommendation to pursue a major in chem or bio, they lose their interest.

I'll be interested to see others' observations.

Hiring Chair

[zharkov]

In the 70s, as I recall, the most popular major in my slac was psychology. Some of that was the 60s counterculture, Kesey, self-discovery, Castenada, and so on.  I wasn't a psych major, but I took psych 101 and the text was put out by Psychology Today, with lots of surrealistic pictures (as in the artist is on acid) and photos of the big names in psych, typically older guys with short hair cuts and blacked horn rimmed glasses.

By the 80s, and "morning in America," business became the dominant major.

I would guess that today, business is more or less the "default" major for students who don't know what to major in. (And even though I teach in a business department, that is too bad, in a way.)

[francie_]

Maybe someone in the UK can tell us if there was flood of new art history majors when HRH Prince William was studying it at university.

[jds2006]

What is Tom Hanks's "discipline" in The DaVinci Code? As I recall, it's something arcane and non-existent on most campuses. I'm brain-freezing on that one right now. Does anybody think we should offer a degree in that?

I've always wanted a Doctorate in Thinkology, by the way.

[mythbuster]

I the Da Vinci code, Hanks is a Prof. of Symbology.

[trentsands]

>>I the Da Vinci code, Hanks is a Prof. of Symbology.

As an academic adviser, I would kindly explain to the student that our school does not offer a major in symbology and refer him or her to related majors such as Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, English, Art History, History, Classical and Near Eastern Studies, etc.

[untenured]

Great post, hiring chair, welcome aboard.

I noticed the jump in forensic studies too.  Once the student learns that it's not running around with weapons and having all of those tools available it takes some of the energy out of them.

Once the student learns that it requires *gasp* study of real, actual, honest-to-goodness chemistry (that means actual work!!), poof goes the interest quicker than the half-life of Polonium 214. 

Untenured

P.S. I almost said "poof goes the interest quicker than the half-life of Uranium 238."  Oops. Its half-life is 4.46 billion years.  Phew.

[spork]

Prior to the CSI/forensics interest, I ran into students who wanted to be FBI profilers (following Jody Foster in Silence of the Lambs and several TV shows).  I told them "well first you have to get a PhD in psychology or an MD and specialize in psychiatry, both of which require 6-8 years of post-graduate work.  Then you have to wait until one of the 3 or 4 people who does this work for the FBI, or the 1 person who does it for the state, retires.  Then you apply for the job along with dozens of other people who have more experience than you do."

[dale1]

TrentSands:

I think your strategy is a good one.  Often we want to derail these loons who think they can do all this fancy stuff, when we are quite convinced that they cannot. 

I've often had to unpack with the student the "why" behind their interest in symbology, forensic science, or profiling in order to have the student examine their assumptions about the field. 

Usually they come around, though others persist in their belief that they'll be the next Horatio Caine.