33 unusual majors your college probably didn't offer

(Image credit: (Facebook/Becker College))

last updated 10 January 2015

About 150 million college students — including a record number of 21.8 million in the U.S. alone — will be faced with the dreaded question that haunts all coeds throughout their academic careers: "What's your major?"

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Just because you think you've deciphered the meaning of "I Am the Walrus" doesn't make you an expert on the Fab Four. But earning an M.A. in The Beatles, Popular Music & Society can go a long way to upping your Liverpool street cred. Established in 2009, the program explores the role popular music has played over the past 50 years, using The Beatles as a case study. Not surprisingly, you'll need to travel to the band's birthplace — sometimes called "The World Capital City of Pop" — to do it. Also not surprisingly: The program is the only one of its kind in the world.

Leave it to California to open the country's first cannabis college. Then again, considering the thriving — and legal — industry that exists for medicinal marijuana in The Golden State, it really only makes sense that there would be a trade school for the cannabis industry. And one where classes in the history, politics, and legalities of herb are taught alongside seminars on growing and methods of ingestion. But don't be surprised if your classroom time gets interrupted by a raid by the Feds; that's exactly what happened in April of 2012, when a bevy of DEA, IRS, and U.S. Marshals Service agents showed up on the school's doorstep.

Think you're funny? Whip out your diploma and prove it. Toronto's Humber College takes its laughs seriously with its Comedy: Writing and Performance program, aimed at helping sort of funny people become really funny people by perfecting their comedic timing and understanding of how the funny business works, utilizing a faculty of working comedians, and putting on weekly shows at the nearby Yuk Yuk's Comedy Club and an industry showcase at Second City — all in the name of making it big in stand-up, improv, sketch comedy, and/or screenwriting.

As tempted as one might be to call this a degree in beer-making, there's a lot more to a career in suds than cracking open a cold one. The official description of this B.S. is "an interdisciplinary degree within the College of Arts and Sciences intended to provide students with a strong background in chemistry and biology and a considerable focus in business, marketing, and entrepreneurial principles." Hands-on experience comes courtesy of the Ivory Tower Brewery, an on-campus, nonprofit brewery, and plant managed by the school's students and faculty. We'll drink to that!

College-age connoisseurs who know the difference between a Zinfandel (good) and a White Zinfandel (bad) might be ripe for a career in wine — an industry where demand is outgrowing the supply of qualified professionals to oversee the vineyards that produce the best vino and manage the wineries that sell them. Translation: Job security, kiddos! While Cornell students will face the unique challenges of growing grapes and making wine in a northeastern U.S. climate, the schooling they get in soils, pests, grape varietals, and growing markets can be easily translated to any of the world's wine countries (and make the job that much easier).

A Ph.D in Decision Sciences is really the antithesis of being "undecided," with doctoral candidates at IU amassing expertise in a range of quantitative methods in order to make business decisions at the highest level. These aren't yes or no questions we're dealing with; graduates emerge with the skills to apply research, data, and analysis to solve problems in a range of precise disciplines, from finance to information technology.

And you thought all those hours spent binge-watching Arrested Development had no professional merit! The official pitch for BGSU's B.A. is that "By examining television programs, movies, cars, houses, music, museums, celebratory events, holidays, magazines, and many other manifestations of culture, insights can be used to examine society presently and historically." On a more practical level, students can parlay their studies into a career in journalism, mass media, advertising, or public relations.

Running a flower shop isn't as easy as Janet made it look on Three's Company, what with all the sourcing, purchasing, marketing, merchandising, and selling that's required. Floral Management students at MSU get an up-close look at what a career in floral retail, wholesale, design, styling, or display gardening feels and smells like, courtesy of The University Florist, an on-campus flower shop owned and operated by the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences.

As Jim Perdue would tell you, it takes a tough man (or woman) to make a tender chicken. Hence the need for an education in the science of poultry, where academics, research, and service play equally important parts in a career in this major agricultural commodity. The program's wide-ranging curriculum includes courses in biology, chemistry, and zoology and such service-oriented topics as mathematics, public speaking, and technical writing. Bonus points for determining once and for all which came first, the chicken or the egg?

A keen understanding of casino game design and engineering is as essential to the people who design the games in Vegas as it is to the pros who try to beat them. Which makes it all the more appropriate that Sin City is the setting for this B.S. degree, which educates students on both the art and business of the entertainment industry, from venue design and rigging to biomechanics and animatronics. Plus, students are never too far from a casino in which to ply their trade.

Countless entrepreneurs have been warned about the dangers of doing business with friends — but family? That's another story. Some of today's biggest corporate success stories — including The Gap, Walmart, Ford, and Motorola — are technically "family businesses." In DeLand, Florida, Stetson's Family Enterprise Center has been teaching students the right (and wrong!) ways to mix business with relatives since 1998. Topics of interest include personal, professional, and leadership development as well as legal, estate, and asset protection.

Canada looms large and expansive just north of the United States, but most of us are pretty uneducated about what the heck goes on there. Students who want to learn more about our neighbors to the north can absorb the culture, politics, and history of Canada through a Canadian Studies major at one of several universities. This sounds like possibly the only major in which there's a slight chance you'll have to watch Strange Brew as part of your coursework, unless you design your own Rick Moranis Studies major.

We're pretty sure that all of the great pyramids have been discovered, but on the off chance that there's still a sphinx or two waiting to be stumbled upon, would-be Indiana Joneses would do well to have a degree in Egyptology. Established in 2005, Brown's Department of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies — which offers B.A. and Ph.D degrees — brings students back to the birthplace of Western civilization as we know it with "Introduction to Classical Hieroglyphic Egyptian Writing and Language" and "Archaeology and the Ancient World" among their required courses.

It may seem odd, since so many folks took their childhood piano lessons from someone who didn't have collegiate training, but the B.Mus degree at Nashville's Belmont University doesn't sound like a bad career move from a stability standpoint; moms forcing their kids to take piano lessons is an economy-resistant tradition. Want to take that education one step further? The University of Oregon in Eugene offers advanced graduate degrees in the discipline.

Being a pin monkey may be Homer Simpson's unreachable dream, but you can make it your reality at Indiana's first college, which offers the country's only program in Bowling Industry Management and Technology. Required classes for this A.S. degree include "Lane and Pinsetter Maintenance," "Pro Shop Operations and Essentials," and "Responsible Alcohol Service." The program's site proudly touts its facilities, including an 18-lane bowling center that acts as a laboratory for students to gain hands-on experience.

Much like film editors are to the movies, costume designers are the unsung heroes of the theater — the people upon whom the audience (unknowingly) relies to take them into a fantasy world. Needless to say, there's a science to this talent that goes far beyond a flair for fashion. Costume Technology majors within DePaul's Theatre School will explore the world of costuming from a variety of disciplines, from art and architecture to ethics and business management. Draping, cutting, and designing are, of course, part of the package, too.

It's the dream of many a beach bum to spend their days carting tourists around and showing off the undiscovered corners of their waterfront worlds. James E. Lockwood Jr. School of Diving in Key West can get you one knot closer to this goal with an A.A.S. curriculum that merges diving science with instruction, leading the way to a thriving — and oh-so-freeing — career as a dive master, scuba instructor, commercial diver, water-based medical technician, research diver, or underwater photojournalist.

This bachelor's degree path at the Lynchburg, Virginia school that was founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1971 sounds an awful lot like home economics. According to the school's website, "The Department of Family and Consumer Sciences teaches students the values, knowledge and skills necessary to be proactive in strengthening the contemporary family. The goal of Family and Consumer Sciences is to enable individuals and families to function as healthy units in the larger society." Classes like "Balancing Work and Family" and "Family Economic Decisions" sound like helpful bits of life advice but aren't quite what we're used to thinking about in the classroom.

In 2008, UNH launched a dual major in EcoGastronomy, a program that educates students on how food gets from farms to their plates. With an eye toward sustainability, pupils study food at a number of steps along the road to their mouth to gauge the ecological impact of what they eat. EcoGastronomy students will also pick up knowledge about the hospitality industry, nutrition, and agriculture in this major. And will undoubtedly get to sample a ton of tasty fresh foods.

If you like horses, why not major in them? Several colleges offer degree programs in studying horses, each with its own focus. Some programs, like this one at Becker College in Worcester, MA, offer students the choice of concentrating in riding instruction so that they can eventually teach lessons. Other programs, like the one at the University of Maryland, forgo saddling up in favor of preparing students for scientific horse study or working on the business side of the equine industry.

Ready to take that part-time gig watching your younger siblings to the professional stage? The Professional Nanny Program at Sullivan University in Louisville, Kentucky has been turning babysitters into early childhood education professionals for nearly 25 years now with a 12-month diploma program that teaches essentials like CPR, First Aid, and Water Safety plus the fun stuff, like etiquette and manners, effective communication (with parents and children), and party planning.

An unsurprising fact about the Gunsmithing school at LCC in Susanville, California is that it was founded in 1945. A surprising fact about the Gunsmithing school at LCC in Susanville, California is that it is still a thriving academic endeavor. But its specialties aren't as archaic as they sound. The NRA-affiliated program — the oldest in the U.S. — offers A.S. degrees in Firearms Repair and General Gunsmithing, with "Basic Machine Shop," "Barreling," and "Engraving" among the course offerings.

Like something out of a Spike Jonze movie, puppetry has been an academic specialty of UConn since 1964, when master puppeteer Frank W. Ballard — who passed away in 2010 and for whom an on-campus museum is named — first started teaching classes. In the five decades since the subject's introduction, the school has put on nearly 500 puppet productions, with graduates of the BFA, MFA and MA programs going on to design and perform for some of the world's best-known theaters, television shows, film studios, schools, museums, and beyond.

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