A requirement of subject-matter concentration—generally to the extent of two full-year courses or their equivalent in the student's annual budget of four or five—during the last two years of the undergraduate curriculum is common to the great majority of colleges and universities granting liberal arts degrees. It complements a requirement of diversification that is also commonly prescribed as a restriction on the freedom students otherwise would have to concentrate still further in their choices among course offerings. Together, the two embody a philosophy of balance in the distribution of studies; but they do not define the scope or content of any particular area of concentration.

The requirement of a “major” applies equally to a wide variety of fields of study, in the humanities and the natural as well as the social sciences. The aims and problems of the major in political science, therefore, are in large measure those of the major as such. They merge, indeed, into the broader question of the general goals of college education in the upper-class years, since the major figures so importantly in the work of juniors and seniors. They focus on two points chiefly: (1) the course content, or area, of the major in political science, and (2) the ways and means of instruction within the major, to the end of deepening its educational value. Put more briefly, the problems are what to learn and how to learn in the area of principal interest.