{"id":43215,"date":"2018-04-09T06:39:19","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T13:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=43215"},"modified":"2018-04-09T06:39:19","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T13:39:19","slug":"why-double-majors-might-beat-you-out-of-a-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/why-double-majors-might-beat-you-out-of-a-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Why double-majors might beat you out of a job"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nTwo college majors are better than one. That is the conclusion that researchers are beginning to reach.<\/p>\n

Prior research has already shown that students who double major\u00a0can earn more<\/a>\u00a0than peers who majored in only one field.<\/p>\n

New research we conducted recently shows that\u00a0double majors fare better<\/a>\u00a0in another way as well: They are more innovative.<\/p>\n

We are education researchers with an interest in how the college experience develops students. What we found in\u00a0our newly-published study<\/a>\u00a0is that students who double majored scored 17.4 percentile points higher on our overall innovation measure than the average student. The innovation advantage for double majors is almost three times higher than any other major, including business, engineering and math\/statistics.<\/p>\n

This finding held even after we controlled for a number of variables, including a family history of entrepreneurship, courses taken in college, race, gender and GPA. We even controlled for personality traits, such as being an extrovert and being open to new experiences. We also considered the institution students attended, the quality of teaching to which they were exposed and the nature of their interactions with faculty members.<\/p>\n

So what does it mean to be more innovative and why does it matter?<\/p>\n

What makes a person innovative<\/strong><\/h4>\n

For our study, we sought to measure students\u2019 innovation capacities. We did so using a relatively new survey instrument that enabled us to determine how institutions can help students develop their innovation capacities. These capacities include skills related to networking, persuasive communication, working on diverse teams, and risk taking.<\/p>\n