# Hybrid Degree Programs By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2022-11-19 Most college degree programs are technical or non-technical. On the technical side, you have engineering, mathematics, economics, biology, computer science, and physics. On the non-technical side, you have literature, music, philosophy, management, history, sociology, and art. There are certainly arguments to be made about which program belongs within each category, but suffice it to say there is a reason why some colleges only offer liberal arts degrees and others offer engineering degrees. There is at least some divide between them. This divide has gone on long enough and it's worth considering what degrees would look like if we blended them. I'm not talking about one school offering both music and engineering programs. I'm talking about full-degree program integration. Instead of one side or the other arguing about which program provides the most value to the student, what if the synthesis of the two degrees were to happen? As this blog has explored, analysis is viewed as highly technical. Most analysts come from technical degree programs. However, we've also seen how analysis is much more than crunching the numbers once thinking gets involved. As said in [[Analytics Aphorisms II]], analysis unconstrained is philosophy. This isn't some idealistic viewpoint - the combination of technical and philosophical understanding has [[Pragmatic]] implications. It's not uncommon in organizational management circles for there to be discussions about not only what and how we work, but why we work. The why falls squarely into something beyond the zeros and ones of computational logic and systems theory. Thus, organizational and business analytics is much more than technical understanding. From the beginning, the analyst's education has divided them from a core part of being better analysts. We've been indoctrinated to only focus on the technical with occasional ventures into the squishy side of management. What would the analyst and organizational world look like if analysts had a balanced education? Replace a few technical classes with philosophy and psychology. Ensure that analysts take a course on studying and understanding history. Make analysts take an art class. Require a senior thesis that not only solves a technical problem but speaks to the ethical and philosophical implications. The value is in the synthesis of ideas, not in the doubling down on existing ideologies. #### Related Items [[Analytics]] [[College]] [[Philosophy]] [[Organizational Analytics]] [[Liberal Arts]] [[The Human Condition]]