A few weeks back, the New York Times published an article on the relevance of political science.  According to them, the main trouble stems from the term “science” in “political science.” A growing number of academics are staying away from policy-based research and putting more emphases on statistical methods and mathematics-based models, resulting in the further specialization of the field of political science. If this continues, political science research runs the risk of being increasingly irrelevant to real-life concerns. But there are still traditional scholars who prefer to answer the “big questions,” and look back on history and culture in attempts to explain political phenomena. For the Times, a balance between the two methods is optimal.

At Columbia, the emphasis seems to be on “big picture” analysis—courses lean toward the qualitative side, while the required Core Curriculum provides students with some additional insight into political philosophy and cultures. There is some acknowledgment of political science as an interdisciplinary study: students are “strongly advised, but not required,” to take additional credits in a related social science field. But most interestingly, there doesn't seem to be any math requirement for the major.

I understand if Columbia, being a liberal arts college, wants to encourage students to be intelligent, well-rounded thinkers rather than just pre-professionals content with their own specific field, but as many political science majors eventually choose to pursue careers related to, well, policy and government, the lack of emphasis on quantitative reasoning and practical training wouldn’t exactly give these students an advantage when they go off into the real world. As governments slowly start to resemble corporations, quantitative data becomes just as important as qualitative reasoning in justifying decisions. Having worked for the government over the summer, I don’t profess to knowing how the system works, but what struck me was the fact that bureaucracy was not just a model I learned about in my International Politics course but a central actor responsible for the livelihood of millions of citizens. While esteemed scholars present their theories on how governments function, the people in government couldn’t care less—they just want to get the job done and make sure nobody gets hurt at the end of the day. The divide between the academic and professional concept of “politics” is quite troubling, as it might result in a day where we study political science for its own sake rather than for actually improving the process of making policy.

The political science classes at Columbia provide a good introduction to such a complex and uncertain “science,” but whether it is a comprehensive reflection of the field would be a totally different question. Sometimes I wish classes would have a better balance between the abstract and practical aspects of political science, so I could both understand a policy and have the adequate analytical skills to actually formulate one. But then again, maybe I’m just taking the wrong classes.