Interdisciplinary studies programs teach students to approach their academic interests from different angles. Students take courses primarily in two or three departments, combining and overlapping majors. Many schools prefer the term "multidisciplinary studies."

Music and psychology. Religion and politics. Law and information technology. English, women's studies, and anthropology. Why are these seemingly unrelated fields paired? All the pairs, in fact, are different majors that students have combined into an interdisciplinary studies program.

Contrary to popular belief, interdisciplinary studies is not for people who can't make up their minds about what program of study to pursue. This program actually emerged when people began to realize that certain fields overlapped with others.

In some cases, new programs of study emerged from this realization. Bioethics is an example. People interested in the ethical questions surrounding medicine and science needed both to learn science principles and also to study ethics and philosophy.

Cultural and ethnic studies programs also emerged based on interdisciplinary studies. As you might imagine, learning about a culture of people takes tools from many different fields, including language studies, history, and literature.

But college students constantly come up with new combinations of fields, and you can too. Interdisciplinary studies programs celebrate these new combinations and help you pursue them. If you don't believe in distinct and clear-cut boundaries between single programs of study and want to design your own major using aspects of different departments, then you should check out this program.

Many colleges and universities offer bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in interdisciplinary studies. A bachelor's degree typically takes about four years of full-time study after high school. A master's degree usually takes one to two additional years after a bachelor's degree and a doctoral degree about four to five years after a master's degree.