One of the most common frustrations in degree selection is the student who genuinely loves multiple subjects and cannot see why they should have to choose. For these students, joint honours degrees, liberal arts programmes, and double majors offer genuine alternatives to conventional single-subject specialisation. Here is what each option involves and who it suits best.
Joint Honours: Two Subjects, One Degree
Joint honours degrees (common in the UK) allow students to study two subjects simultaneously, typically at roughly equal weighting (though some are majorly dominated by one). These work best when the two subjects have a genuine intellectual relationship — history and politics, economics and mathematics, philosophy and neuroscience — rather than being chosen to avoid the decision entirely. The challenge is that students do half the study time in each area compared to single honours students, which can feel like breadth without depth if the subjects are not well chosen.
Liberal Arts: A Genuinely Different Educational Philosophy
Liberal arts programmes (found in the USA and increasingly in the UK and Europe, often under names like BA Liberal Arts or BA with Senior Status) are built on the philosophy that an educated person should have broad exposure to arts, sciences, humanities, and social sciences before specialising. Students take courses across disciplines in the first years and declare a concentration or major in later years. This suits intellectually curious, broad students who want to delay specialisation — and find the forced choice of a specific subject at 17 genuinely problematic.
Liberal arts and joint degrees are not easier than single honours — they require managing multiple intellectual frameworks simultaneously, which demands a different type of cognitive flexibility.
Who These Approaches Suit Best
These degrees suit students who are intellectually omnivorous, who have a clear interest in intersections between fields (the student who wants to think about the history of science, or the economics of environmental policy), and who have the self-management to navigate courses from multiple departments. They are not the right choice for students who are choosing them to avoid committing to anything — that motivation tends to produce an unsatisfying experience in which they feel like an outsider in every department.