Getting a university degree has never seemed moreimportant: college graduates earn more money, livelonger, and are happier. But college degrees areexpensive (especially in the US), narrowly focused (especially in the UK), and often fail to build theskills employers want (true in most countries).
The London Interdisciplinary School (LIS), which will launch in 2021 with a target of 100 students, will scrap traditional academic subjects and offer a three-year bachelor of arts andsciences degree designed to tackle real-world issues. The curriculum is built aroundinterdisciplinary problems—knife crime, childhood obesity, palm oil in supply chains, plasticpollution—as well as quantitative and qualitative research skills. Employers like the MetPolice, Innocent, and Virgin will provide project ideas and offer five-week work experience forstudents.
The idea is similar to a US liberal arts degree (a rarity in the UK) but also more explicitlyfocused on "interdisciplinarity," or drawing on multiple subjects—economics, psychology, sociology, statistics—to solve complex problems like childhood obesity. In other words, theproblem, not the subject, sits at the center of the curriculum. The skills students develop, thefounders hope, will more closely align with what an AI-infused, automated world demands: collaboration between people and machines, critical thinking, speaking and writing skills, anddata management, to name just a few things.
Students will tackle problems through various disciplines: knife crime, for example, byunderstanding cultural and socioeconomic factors in different neighborhoods, data science, statistics, publicly available data, an economics or psychology lens.
In the UK, students apply through a central clearinghouse, and exam results are paramount. At LIS, students will instead apply directly and all will be invited to a "selection day" which willinclude a face-to-face interview so that LIS can understand a student's background, motivations, and passions. Interviews will be conducted by a panel to minimize bias. Conditional offers will be granted based on personal background, circumstances and, also, grades.
