What is the hardest degree to get?

[K12]

This feels like an excuse for one group of academics to be snobbish to another group.

This seems completely arbitrary to me. I for one would put Foreign languages on the "very difficult" end with Maths and Philosophy on the "easier end" but I know many people who would be the complete opposite.

Maybe a more meaningful way could be to do this based on entry requirements or average number of hours spent on study but even that won't really give you more than a general idea of what is expected.


It's also worth saying that if you want to base your choice of degree on how much it will allow you to swing your intellectual penis around rather than on your future plans and what interests you then you really need to grow the fuck up!

 

[Nomad]

This feels like an excuse for one group of academics to be snobbish to another group.

This seems completely arbitrary to me. I for one would put Foreign languages on the "very difficult" end with Maths and Philosophy on the "easier end" but I know many people who would be the complete opposite.

Maybe a more meaningful way could be to do this based on entry requirements or average number of hours spent on study but even that won't really give you more than a general idea of what is expected.


It's also worth saying that if you want to base your choice of degree on how much it will allow you to swing your intellectual penis around rather than on your future plans and what interests you then you really need to grow the fuck up!

I don't think entry requirements would be a good way to measure this - that would be more of a supply/demand or shape of prior education thing. Average number of hours spent on study would vary significantly simply by virtue of what it actually is you do in a certain course. Courses that require heavy reading would skyrocket in that scale, for instance, simply because reading vast amounts of text will always take time regardless of the level of difficulty.

The best measurement I can think of would probably be student throughput, i.e. how many of the enrolled students that manage to get their degrees in the end. Even this would provide very shaky grounds for comparison, however, since this can be affected by everything from the state of the labour market to the pedagogical and didactical skills of individual teachers. There are simply too many potential sources of error for an external measurement to be remotely reliable.

The fundamental issue here is that the comparison is meaningless to begin with, because there isn't sufficient common ground between the fields to form a basis for it - which makes any internal measurements impossible. I reiterate: you cannot judge whether 5mph is faster than 60kg.

That said, I agree with the basic gist of what you wrote (although I wouldn't phrase it quite like you did). As someone said earlier, a more meaningful question would be "What is generally perceived to be the hardest degree to get?". This could tell us something about social norms, educational systems, academic culture and the distribution of skills among the populace.

 

[Nickolai77]

I think there's too many variables which influense how challenging a degree is that the OP's list isn't really all that useful. Some people have already correctly said that the difficulty of a certain course depends a lot on the institution and the teachers, and I think a equally significant factor is one's own abilities and interests. A mathmatically minded person's going to find a degree like aeronautical engineering easier than English Literature, and vice versa for those who have a way with words and expression rather than numbers.

You could say the OP's list simply details how hard it is to get a degree from some unknown instituition for somebody who struggles with maths but has a talent social studies.


Btw, the subject content of a subject like marketing varies a lot, it can be very maths heavy (i.e- market research) depending on how the subject is taught. If we're grading subjects in terms of mathmatical ability here marketing should be higher up.

 

[Reaper195]

A no-scope at degree 360.

 

[gunny1993]

Any idiot can get a degree if they put enough hours into it, intelligence is using that knowledge in the correct ways.

Besides its way too variable, I know people who can pick up a language in months but couldn't do anything I've done at uni. It's a simple matter of brain structure variation between people, some people are good at this, some at that.

We all get along because foolish people like you don't ask these questions which are just bait for the supercilious.

 

[Keystone]

I think you really need to separate out undergraduate degrees from graduate degrees. A college major is going to take four years (or so) to complete no matter what, and, while there are some general rules as to the difficulty of a major, the difficulty is going to primarily come down to the requirements set by the school and the professor, as well what classes a particular person studying in that major chooses to take. For example, at the school that I went to, there was only a very small physics program that primarily existed to satisfy pre-med reqs, and majoring in physics was generally considered pretty easy at the school.

Ph.D. and professional degree programs are different in some ways, and I think in this context it's fairer to try to compare the difficulty of different disciplines from a macro perspective. First of all, you usually have to take another standardized test even to get in. For many professional degrees, there's some kind of board certification required, often involving some test you have to take after graduating from professional school. For doctoral programs, you usually have to create some original piece of work. In all of these cases, I think the level of difficulty is more consistent in any particular field than it is for college majors.

 

[Padwolf]

Well, it would depend on the university, the person and the field they want to go into after university. I can vouch that English Literature and Sociology can be very difficult at times. Especially if your degree is a double honour and you have to do both at the same time. Seriously, trying picking apart several books in one week while trying to write a sociology essay was difficult. Good fun, but difficult and damn tiring. I never want to see a copy of Ulysses again. Ever. Nor do I ever want to see or hear What Maisie Knew, because Maisie knew nothing and that book was painful to read and painful to pick apart. But Ulysses... I don't even... I just can't handle any of it. Just looking at the name of it makes me feel tired and frustrated. Great book and incredibly fascinating. I spent so many hours, weeks, it turned into months, trying to dig into that thing. In the end I scrapped it all to write on a different book I could actually work with.

 

[wrightguy0]

Architecture is the hardest out of all engineering related degrees, you have to be equal parts mathematician, physicist, artist, engineer and businessman, it's a lot of hats to wear, and a lot of study for a career that you'll probably never get to retire from.

 

[theboombody]

I wish you would stop making definitive statements about reality when these statements have no clear empirical grounding - anecdotal evidence is not acceptable evidence. Your experiences do not mirror the experiences of the rest of humanity. You have absolutely no basis for the claim that every single biochemist could have easily obtained a sociology degree.

I do not dispute that every biochemist could have gotten a sociology degree. Just like I do not dispute that every sociologist could have gotten a biochemistry degree. It's all a matter of effort, and hence I do dispute the "easily" part. Being skilled at one sort of intellectual activity does not automatically confer skill at another sort - on this, there is very firm empirical grounding. Both Spearman's G-factor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)] and Gardner's multiple intelligences [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences] have (on very separate grounds) provided good evidence for this, for instance. If we're sticking with anecdotal evidence (which is actually acceptable when disputing a categorical claim about "everyone". Even one deviant case will sink that ship.), I could personally name a few examples of people with degrees in the natural sciences (although not specifically biochemistry) and engineering that seemed to have a very hard time grasping fundamental concepts of political analysis.

Well if I stopped making statements like that I would be politically correct, and that's not going to happen.

There are oftentimes I will accept the authority of somebody who is recognized in their field, and oftentimes I will not. I've read "The Ego and the Id" by Freud, and after that reading, I agreed with another psychiatrist who said, "Out of Freud's body of work, what's correct is not original, and what's original is not correct." Did I get the words of that quote exactly right? No. But I absolutely nailed the spirit of the quote. And that's the idea behind political incorrectness, ignoring the letter of something, but nailing the spirit of it. Which I believe needs to happen much more often.

So anyway, I value the opinion regarding psychiatry from a man off the street more than I value the opinion regarding psychiatry by the renowned Freud.

Next you'll tell me that golf is just as an athletic of a sport as football, or that a person working at an office at age 23 is just as prone to injury as a person playing football at age 23 because they may get carpal tunnel syndrome.

Just as some sports are more athletic than others, some degrees are more intellectual than others. Now are there gray areas? Of course. But marathon running is going to be near the top of the list and golf is going to be near the bottom.

 

[theboombody]

what blowoff classes did you take in high school?

Why are you suddenly shifting the topic to high school, when we were before talking about university? High school is an irrelevant distraction to this conversation because students have far less choice in what they can study there. Also, I don't know terribly many high schools with a quantum mechanics elective.

This was merely to show that someone can hypocritically on one day say, "Yeah, that's a blow off class," and on another day say, "Yeah, all classes are equal."

I may be rude, but at least I'm consistently rude. I'm not going to go and say all degrees are equal. Better than someone on this forum saying all classes are equally challenging then going out into the actual world saying, "Oh yeah, I remember such and such was really a blow off class."

Let's just say, did you ever take any kind of blow off class EVER or are there no blow off classes for you?

 

[Nomad]

Well if I stopped making statements like that I would be politically correct, and that's not going to happen.

So what you're saying is that arguing from evidence and empirical grounding (and not making unsupported definitive claims about reality) makes you politically correct? Alright, then. What's bad about that, exactly? It sounds to me like you could just scrap the word "politically" and just call it "correct", then.

There are oftentimes I will accept the authority of somebody who is recognized in their field, and oftentimes I will not. I've read "The Ego and the Id" by Freud, and after that reading, I agreed with another psychiatrist who said, "Out of Freud's body of work, what's correct is not original, and what's original is not correct." Did I get the words of that quote exactly right? No. But I absolutely nailed the spirit of the quote. And that's the idea behind political incorrectness, ignoring the letter of something, but nailing the spirit of it. Which I believe needs to happen much more often.

So anyway, I value the opinion regarding psychiatry from a man off the street more than I value the opinion regarding psychiatry by the renowned Freud.

See, this is a prime example of why I don't think you're equipped to rate the intellectual hierarchy of different fields - you seem to be under the impression that Freud is an authority in psychiatry. He's not, as that "other psychiatrist" you mentioned implied. Not only was Freud's work primarily in the field of psychology rather than psychiatry, but Freud's work has been largely discredited. His psychoanalysis is widely considered a pseudoscience at this point. It's just that his name is recognizable for the general public with no intimate knowledge of the field - like Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Because people know about him, when you want to make a character seem smart in a sitcom, you have the character quote Freud. His supposed scientific "renown" is a self-perpetuating myth.

Next you'll tell me that golf is just as an athletic of a sport as football, or that a person working at an office at age 23 is just as prone to injury as a person playing football at age 23 because they may get carpal tunnel syndrome.

Just as some sports are more athletic than others, some degrees are more intellectual than others. Now are there gray areas? Of course. But marathon running is going to be near the top of the list and golf is going to be near the bottom.

Not only have we suddenly left academia, but you're still not getting it. No, I will not claim that golf is as "athletic" as football, whatever that means. I might claim that they're not comparable, since they might utilize different skillsets (I wouldn't know, though. I know nothing about sports). Again - establishing equality is also a comparison. For two things to be equal, they need to share a common scale. 5mph is not equal to 60kg, but this does not make one greater than the other.

As for work-related injuries, you'd need to specify a country. Some countries include psychological injuries in their statistics, and some do not. Some countries have far-reaching regulations regarding physical work safety, and some do not. A country might display a low amount of work-related injuries simply because of a very strict definition of what a work-related injury is, while another country might display a low amount of work-related injuries because of strict regulations that prevent such injuries. In some countries, work-related injuries will be skewed towards certain kinds of jobs because of how the safety regulations or the working culture and tradition is shaped. This is all a sidetrack, however - I fail to see how it relates to relative academic difficulty in any meaningful way.

 

[Eliam_Dar]

I don't think you can categorize that. For some people learning history might be a challenge because they cannot remember all facts, while for others mathematics may be more complicated. It depends on the person.

 

[theboombody]

As for work-related injuries, you'd need to specify a country. Some countries include psychological injuries in their statistics, and some do not. Some countries have far-reaching regulations regarding physical work safety, and some do not. A country might display a low amount of work-related injuries simply because of a very strict definition of what a work-related injury is, while another country might display a low amount of work-related injuries because of strict regulations that prevent such injuries. In some countries, work-related injuries will be skewed towards certain kinds of jobs because of how the safety regulations or the working culture and tradition is shaped. This is all a sidetrack, however - I fail to see how it relates to relative academic difficulty in any meaningful way.

"You need to specify this, you need to specify that, you need to prove this, etc. etc." That's all I ever hear on these forums. What you all really mean is, "You have to go by what the current authority calls proof. Any other proof is not acceptable." And this proof is based on the letter of the law (scientific, legal, etc.). I got to admit, you guys are great at following the letter of the law, but for the most part are truly awful at following the spirit of it. You never look at why the law was created. You just look at what it says, and go by it so exactly that common sense is forsaken in order to obey that letter. It is the defining characteristic trait of our generation, and it's beyond embarrassing. That's why a judge can say it's okay for the government to take someone's house because their property tax bill payment was six bucks short due to an oversight.

At some point, somebody somewhere is deciding what is legitimate and what is not. I question what is established as legitimate. You do not. If universities actually had a degree for video gaming, would you question that? No. Because you were told it was a legitimate degree by your authorities. Many existing degree programs should never have been created, but they already have been. Someone on a yahoo article today was like, "There's a PHD program in human resources? That sounds a little ridiculous." I would have to agree.

Our society has totally lost its spirit of intuitive sense. No common sense anymore. Because the instant it's mentioned, someone has to say, "And what makes that sense so common? Can you prove it?" No I can't, and furthermore, I shouldn't have to. I will make no further effort to speak your language than the effort I already make.

I bet somewhere at some point, I could construct a degree program that would finally make you say, "Yeah, okay, if that were a real degree, that would definitely be much easier than the existing ones."

 

[Stasisesque]

"You need to specify this, you need to specify that, you need to prove this, etc. etc." That's all I ever hear on these forums. What you all really mean is, "You have to go by what the current authority calls proof. Any other proof is not acceptable." And this proof is based on the letter of the law (scientific, legal, etc.).

You're arguing in a thread about degrees, and criticising the fact that many of the other posters are sticklers for citations, proof, primary sources etc.?

 

[x EvilErmine x]

Well I don't know about hardest but Physiology was quite tough. My units at uni included genetics, drug metabolism and pharmokenetis, Virology, Human reproduction-development-and aging, Neuroscience, Microbiology, Organic chemistry, Statistical analysis, and anatomy.

But I don't think there is such a thing as the hardest degree to get really, it's all relative I think.

 

[And Man]

If we're talking undergrad, then the hardest are Electrical Engineering and Chemical Engineering. It can be argued which is harder between the two.

If we're talking Doctorate level, then everything is hard

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I honestly don't even. I know I'm a bit late but fuck some of the stuff in this thread is just I don't have words for it. I doubt many if any people here have any real basis to say what is easier or harder than anything else. All we can go on is that some degrees reach a certain level and compare to that ie a masters is easier than a phd.

Even then there are wildly varying work loads between colleges. For example, last I check my college takes in more Engineering students than pretty much most if not all other colleges in my country and has one of the highest(once again if not the highest requirements) to get into Engineering. Also on a quick check of NUIs and some big ITs it is the biggest and the highest requirements(doesn't make it or me better mind you).

Does that make my course better than other Engineering courses or other course in general? No and its as simple as that. Any college that cares about the course it is running will have a suitably difficult course. It is easy for me to say the computer science is easy and a joke of a course because I've sat a few modules programming and otherwise. That however, would be a stupid statement to make as I don't fully understand the work load they would have with their core modules compared to my own.

 

[Nomad]

"You need to specify this, you need to specify that, you need to prove this, etc. etc." That's all I ever hear on these forums. What you all really mean is, "You have to go by what the current authority calls proof. Any other proof is not acceptable." And this proof is based on the letter of the law (scientific, legal, etc.). I got to admit, you guys are great at following the letter of the law, but for the most part are truly awful at following the spirit of it. You never look at why the law was created. You just look at what it says, and go by it so exactly that common sense is forsaken in order to obey that letter. It is the defining characteristic trait of our generation, and it's beyond embarrassing. That's why a judge can say it's okay for the government to take someone's house because their property tax bill payment was six bucks short due to an oversight.

At some point, somebody somewhere is deciding what is legitimate and what is not. I question what is established as legitimate. You do not.

... Law? Now we're getting more than a little sidetracked. The law doesn't prove anything - it isn't descriptive, it's normative. As for accepting only established beliefs as truth, that's a very valid epistemological criticism of conventional science. Amusingly, the core of your argument is pretty well in line with the theoretical mainstream of feminist gender studies, a field I suspect you would dismiss as unscientific.

The thing is, though, that the criticism is only valid as a critique of social power distribution by way of a foucauldian "knowledge is power" rationality. It does not form basis for a claim that discredited views are automatically as valid as hegemonic views. This line of thinking that you're presenting here (that your oppressed truth is as valid as the truth of the current hegemonic authority) is actually a perfect example of the "cookie cutter similarity"-mentality that you've been claiming to criticize all along.

I would argue, in line with scientific realism [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_realism], that while we may not be able to reach an objective truth about the world - we can reach an approximate truth through intersubjectivity. Simply put, if all we (think we) know points at one conclusion, the true answer can probably be found in that general direction. It's not a perfect solution, since the assumption leaves the door open for mass delusion (and the type of skewed power distribution your feminist analysis implies), but that's why we also speak of popperian provisional knowledge [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/]. We can not know the definite truth for all time, but we can assume something is true until something better comes along.

I think it's a nice surprise to see you starting to form a strong feminist critique of the patriarchal regime of truth, however, especially considering your earlier line of reasoning. You might want to work on your arguments for it, though: I'm missing some theoretical grounding and logical coherence.

Many existing degree programs should never have been created, but they already have been. Someone on a yahoo article today was like, "There's a PHD program in human resources? That sounds a little ridiculous." I would have to agree.

Here's where I think your critical power analysis goes astray. It stops abruptly at a rather arbitrary point: you rightly question who gets to decide what is legitimate knowledge, and why. But then you go on and uncritically establish that the answer is "you" and "because". Why is your view on legitimate fields of study better than the established view? What gives you the mandate to decide what is worth knowing and what is not, and what is truth and what is not? The weakness of your feminist power critique is that it's a double-edged sword, like all scientific critiques oriented towards relativism. If knowledge is relative, then what gives your perspective weight? The logical conclusion of your argument is that all points of view are "cookie cutter similar" and cannot be discredited by one another, which I believe you have criticized at an earlier point of this discussion. You need to affix your critique to a theoretical framework allowing for a decision regarding what is right and what is not; you need to either establish a methodological approach for dismissing flawed descriptions of reality, or you need to attach a normative standpoint to your argument.

Our society has totally lost its spirit of intuitive sense. No common sense anymore. Because the instant it's mentioned, someone has to say, "And what makes that sense so common? Can you prove it?" No I can't, and furthermore, I shouldn't have to. I will make no further effort to speak your language than the effort I already make.

Why shouldn't you have to prove your point? I'm genuinely curious. Where would the "common sense" be in uncritically accepting any random statement as truth? Ignore everything else I said if you so wish - but please provide a compelling argument for at least this one question: Why shouldn't you have to?

I bet somewhere at some point, I could construct a degree program that would finally make you say, "Yeah, okay, if that were a real degree, that would definitely be much easier than the existing ones."

I'll take that challenge. Construct a degree program that conforms to the rules and regulations of existing programs, fulfilling conventional expectations of academic quality. Manage that, while still making it genuinely and qualitatively easier than the other programs, and I will cede the point to you. Heck, as a gesture of good will, I'll even let you pick any country you want as a starting point for your project (since regulations and academic traditions will differ from country to country).

 

[Haukur Isleifsson]

I'm going with the "incomparables" crowd. For me math, languages and facts are hard but big theories and concepts are hard. For other people it is completely different. I know doctors who have struggled with sociology courses and engineers who have flunked history. Not because of a lack of interest or dedication but because of a lack of talent. If you want to call those talents they lacked "non-intellectual" than you can. But I'm not going to be taking you seriously if you do.

 

[K12]

As for work-related injuries, you'd need to specify a country. Some countries include psychological injuries in their statistics, and some do not. Some countries have far-reaching regulations regarding physical work safety, and some do not. A country might display a low amount of work-related injuries simply because of a very strict definition of what a work-related injury is, while another country might display a low amount of work-related injuries because of strict regulations that prevent such injuries. In some countries, work-related injuries will be skewed towards certain kinds of jobs because of how the safety regulations or the working culture and tradition is shaped. This is all a sidetrack, however - I fail to see how it relates to relative academic difficulty in any meaningful way.

"You need to specify this, you need to specify that, you need to prove this, etc. etc." That's all I ever hear on these forums. What you all really mean is, "You have to go by what the current authority calls proof. Any other proof is not acceptable." And this proof is based on the letter of the law (scientific, legal, etc.). I got to admit, you guys are great at following the letter of the law, but for the most part are truly awful at following the spirit of it. You never look at why the law was created. You just look at what it says, and go by it so exactly that common sense is forsaken in order to obey that letter. It is the defining characteristic trait of our generation, and it's beyond embarrassing. That's why a judge can say it's okay for the government to take someone's house because their property tax bill payment was six bucks short due to an oversight.

At some point, somebody somewhere is deciding what is legitimate and what is not. I question what is established as legitimate. You do not. If universities actually had a degree for video gaming, would you question that? No. Because you were told it was a legitimate degree by your authorities. Many existing degree programs should never have been created, but they already have been. Someone on a yahoo article today was like, "There's a PHD program in human resources? That sounds a little ridiculous." I would have to agree.

Our society has totally lost its spirit of intuitive sense. No common sense anymore. Because the instant it's mentioned, someone has to say, "And what makes that sense so common? Can you prove it?" No I can't, and furthermore, I shouldn't have to. I will make no further effort to speak your language than the effort I already make.

I bet somewhere at some point, I could construct a degree program that would finally make you say, "Yeah, okay, if that were a real degree, that would definitely be much easier than the existing ones."

The reason people mistrust based on common sense is because the term basically just means "what makes sense to me" or "what most people think". i.e. either an argument from personal credulity or an argument from popularity.

I don't think it would be impossible to rank degree programmes by how intellectually challenging they are (although it would probably not be much more than a "high" "medium" and "low" bands)


Here would be my experimental paradigm to create this ranking:

Definition of a "highly intellectual course" would be a course where intelligence (measured by IQ) is very highly predictive of success in that course. Basically a more intellectual course where general intelligence is most important.

Pick a cross section of students in the subjects being tested for in a collection of university's in whichever country you are doing this (I'd say either the top ten/twenty rated universities overall or the top-ten/twenty rated universities for each subject)

You'd need to control for things like socio-economic background, time spent studying (with teachers, in groups and alone seperately), available resources and probably some other things to.

They you just see which subject most closely fit the "high IQ ->" prediction and there's your rankings.

Obviously you'd get all the same criticisms that IQ tests get plus a few extra ones but it'd be a doable experiment.

Although fundamentally I have no idea why you'd care.