Many majors at Hofstra University, particularly those within the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication, require students to complete a supplemental minor. However, the options available to communication students for fulfilling this requirement are detrimentally limited.
All the students who are going for Bachelor of Arts degrees in the communication school are required to complete a liberal arts minor. Obviously, many liberal arts minors are useful and complimentary to the communication school majors. That being said, these are not the only beneficial minors at Hofstra for communication students.
The school limitations around the minor requirement severely inhibit its usefulness, as these students cannot take a communication minor that may teach them skills complimentary to their major or take a minor from one of Hofstra’s non-liberal arts colleges and schools that could give them a backup plan in a safer field.
For example, a student who is studying for a Bachelor of Fine Arts in writing for the screen must take on a liberal arts minor. Instead, they could have used that elective time to learn the more technical aspects of filmmaking, with a different minor in the school of communication. Or they could find it more useful to take a business minor and give themselves a backup plan for the difficult job field they will enter.
Another major that is limited by these restrictions on the minor requirement is the journalism major, which requires a liberal arts minor, with an exception made for filmmaking, which is a minor in the school of communication. Journalism majors cannot fulfill this requirement with many of the other minors the communication school offers, which would be complimentary to the skills of their major such as public relations or mass media studies.
They also cannot fulfill this requirement with something from Hofstra’s other colleges to diversify their skillset, such as computer science or geographic information systems (GIS). Skills like computer science will soon become invaluable in journalism’s future, which seems more based online and would make Hofstra students stand out as job applicants. Those who are journalism majors and want to minor in GIS, do not fulfill the University’s requirement despite many news organizations using maps.
GIS majors are also required to take a minor, albeit with less restrictions, and are even allowed to take journalism as their minor. According to Hofstra’s website, this is not only possible, but it is a common choice for the major. The fact that a journalism minor satisfies the requirements for a Bachelor of Science in GIS, but a GIS minor does not meet the requirements for the journalism major, points to the absurdity of these arbitrary restrictions.
For many communications majors, knowledge of the science, mathematics and business worlds may provide very useful skills for their professional life. For instance, those who want to be public relations professionals may find that a minor in marketing would make them better professionals. There are countless other examples. Considering the way that may professions are changing due to our increasingly digital world, the skills that will and will not be beneficial in the job market are always changing.
Students often choose a minor to give themselves a backup plan in case their riskier major does not help them get a job. Considering that many subjects falling under the communications umbrella are often considered riskier with more difficult job markets, these students may want to hedge their bets with a more safe minor. Many of these safer degrees, however, are in STEM and business fields. Limiting a student’s minor requirement to the liberal arts dissuades them from making themselves more well-rounded and giving themselves a good backup plan in these fields.
Pigeonholing students’ minor choices into the liberal arts also may deter them from pursuing a subject that they are passionate about.
Taking on a minor is an opportunity to explore another possible career, and restricting the areas that a student can minor in may limit their ambition to explore these subjects. If a student is not passionate about their minor, they are going to be less likely to use this knowledge in their future lives and careers. Instead of excitedly choosing a minor, Hofstra’s communications students that do not feel passionate about any liberal arts subject may opt to choose whatever option seems the easiest or most bearable for them.
