In the third installment of our five-part conversation, ‘Interdisciplinarity, reform, and the future of the University’, we tackle one of the thorniest questions surrounding interdisciplinary degrees: legitimacy. When students ask whether what they’re studying is a “real” degree, it opens up bigger conversations about academic identity, rigour, and tradition. In conversation with Anthony Skerik, Professor Rolle offers a frank response about those concerns, and reframes what rigour can—and should—look like in 21st-century higher education. This post belongs to the ‘Navigating complexity through interdisciplinary teaching and learning‘ Hot Topic series.
The conversation
Anthony: Given everything we’ve talked about so far, this feels like a good moment to shift into some of the common concerns people raise when you challenge traditional academic structures. One I hear fairly often is that interdisciplinary degrees are “too broad” or lack the academic rigour of more traditional programmes. How do you respond to that kind of critique? And does your response change depending on whether it’s coming from students, staff, or people outside the university?
Sabine: The overall message stays the same, even if I might tailor the explanation depending on the audience. First of all, I would absolutely argue that interdisciplinary degrees do not lack rigour. It’s just rigour applied to different lines of enquiry.
Our students are engaging with academic work just like any other students. The difference is that instead of going deeper and deeper into a narrowly defined disciplinary topic, they go deep into complex, real-world problems. That depth is just as demanding—it just manifests differently.
So, for example, where a student of history or physics might drill down into one small subfield within that discipline, a student in our programme might take a theme like inequality or public health or conflict and explore it deeply from multiple angles. They might focus, say, on how inequality intersects with climate change or how conflict shapes healthcare access. That still requires serious, sustained academic engagement—just across disciplinary lines.
We’re not expecting them to master everything within vast topics like sustainability or conflict. Just as we wouldn’t expect an English literature student to know everything about every author and era, we don’t expect our students to master every aspect of interdisciplinary themes. Instead, they develop specialisms and areas of deep knowledge within these broader issues.
So in that sense, I believe our programme absolutely encourages depth and rigour, but in ways that reflect the real complexity of the world our students will step into.
There’s another layer to this conversation, too. Historically, universities were built to train the next generation of academics. And that’s still a part of what they do. In fact, I hope some of our students will go on to become interdisciplinary researchers—people who are able to engage with a range of viewpoints, communicate across disciplinary boundaries, and collaborate effectively with others who may think very differently.
That’s not easy. Researchers rooted deeply in a single discipline often struggle to work across boundaries. They might even spend half an hour talking past each other without realizing they’re using the same words to mean completely different things. Our students, hopefully, won’t have that problem—they’re being trained from the start to understand and navigate that complexity.
But universities don’t just exist to train future academics. Most students won’t stay in academia. They’ll go into the public sector, private sector, social enterprises, NGOs—places where the problems are messy and don’t fit into tidy disciplinary boxes. And in those settings, deep subject expertise isn’t always what’s needed. A physicist working outside academia, for example, may never use the full scope of what they learned at university. What really matters are things like critical thinking, adaptability, and the ability to work across systems and perspectives.
So that’s what we’re preparing students for—not just academic depth, but the intellectual and collaborative skills to thrive in a rapidly changing world. That’s rigour, too. It just looks different.
Anthony: That makes a lot of sense. And I think the distinction you’ve drawn between disciplinary depth and the kind of rigour required to work across complex, real-world problems is especially important. Have there been internal conversations about how we present or communicate the nature of the programme to prospective students, especially around expectations and what makes this path valuable?
Sabine: That’s such a good question, and not an easy one to answer. We do put a lot of effort into explaining the programme. There’s extensive material available on the Degree Finder, on the University’s and EFI’s websites, and through various other channels. We’ve spent quite a bit of time outlining the programme structure, its aims, learning outcomes, and even some of the content of individual courses. On top of that, we run open days and post-offer days where we go into more detail and answer students’ questions directly.
But the truth is, this is an ongoing task. You can’t just do it once and assume it’s done. And it’s difficult. One reason is that not every prospective student engages with this material in the same way, which is completely understandable. Students choose universities for a whole range of reasons—location, reputation, social environment. For some, the city of Edinburgh is the main draw, and their degree choice may come second. So they might not engage deeply with the material before applying or arriving.
A bigger issue, though, is just how hard it is to communicate something complex like this. Even if you’re very clear in writing, communication is never one-directional. There’s the message you’re trying to send, and then there’s the way it’s received and interpreted by someone else—those two things don’t always align. So even if a student reads our materials thoroughly, they’ll still interpret things through their own lens, experiences, and expectations.
And beyond all that, experience changes everything. Once students are actually here—once they’ve moved to Edinburgh, met their peers, sat in our classrooms, and immersed themselves in the city and the wider university environment—their perceptions shift. They change. They’re in a transformative phase of life, and that inevitably shapes how they engage with the programme.
So even if they had a clear understanding of the degree beforehand, the lived experience of it will always be different. Some students might initially struggle with or even dislike certain aspects, only to come to appreciate them over time as their perspectives shift. It’s a dynamic process, and one that no amount of advance explanation can fully prepare them for.
Anthony: That really sets the stage for what comes next. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how students can carry that confidence into the job market and beyond.
Next time in Part 4…
Anthony: The anxiety some students feel—wondering whether their interdisciplinary degree will be taken seriously—is more than just a passing worry. It taps into longstanding academic norms that privilege depth over breadth, tradition over transformation. Yet, as Sabine makes clear, this programme doesn’t shy away from depth or challenge. It simply asks different questions and applies intellectual rigour to different kinds of problems.
By pushing students to explore complexity rather than certainty, EFI is redefining what a university degree can prepare you for. But if that sounds radical, it’s also deeply practical. As we’ll see in the next post, these broader, systems-based ways of thinking are exactly what employers are beginning to look for—and what the future demands.
Anthony Skerik
Anthony Skerik is a student at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the inaugural Interdisciplinary Futures class of 2027. His work explores how interdisciplinary thinking can be applied to real-world challenges, with a particular interest in conflict, innovation, and co-creation. He has held multiple positions within the University’s Information Services Group (ISG), supporting projects that bridge technology, communication, and education. As a co-editor of the Navigating Complexity: Preparing for the Future through Interdisciplinary Education blog series, he is committed to highlighting student perspectives and documenting the evolving landscape of interdisciplinary learning.
Sabine Rolle
Sabine Rolle is based in the Department of European Languages and Cultures (LLC) but currently does all her teaching through EFI, on the MA (Hons) Interdisciplinary Futures and the electives offered by EFI to students from across the university. Her strong interest in interdisciplinary education is also put to use in the role she plays leading on the development of cross-School Challenge Courses, as part of the Curriculum Transformation Programme and the implementation of the Learning and Teaching Strategy 2030.
