Lang’s General Degree Requirements
In addition to the requirements outlined here, Lang has specific requirements, including a minimum number of credits in liberal arts courses as well as college residency requirements. All students should read Lang’s General Degree Requirements and consult with both their Student Success advisor and their Departmental Faculty Advisor each semester to ensure they are on track to graduate.
Degree Works
To be sure their Degree Works account reflects the information in this worksheet, students should forward any approved exemptions from the following requirements to their Student Success advisor.
Bachelor’s-Master’s Program
Undergraduates in the BA-MA program can earn up to 18 credits (depending on the master's program) in New School master's courses and apply those graduate credits to both their BA and their MA. Submission of the Bachelor’s-Master’s application is required (members of the direct-entry cohort do not have to submit an application but do have to declare the Bachelor's-Master's combination they wish to pursue). Students should consult their Departmental Faculty Advisor and their Student Success advisor if they are pursuing a BA/MA, including those offered in Global Studies:
- BA Global Studies – MA Anthropology
- BA Global Studies – MA Historical Studies
- BA Global Studies - MA International Affairs
- BA Global Studies - MA Media Studies
- BA Global Studies - MA Politics
Requirements for the BA in Global Studies
As of fall 2020, students declaring the major in Global Studies must take 12 courses plus any courses necessary to fulfill the foreign language proficiency requirement. As of fall 2020, students declaring the major in Global Studies must take 12 courses plus any courses necessary to fulfill the foreign language proficiency requirement. Students must earn a grade of C or higher in all courses to fulfill major requirements, and B or better in the introductory courses to declare the major. Declare your major by following the process outlined in Declaring Your Major. Students who have declared the major in Global Studies before fall 2020 but wish to follow the fall 2020 curriculum can consult their Student Success advisor about submitting a Change of Catalog Year request.
Only specific courses satisfy the major requirements, including electives, and only designated experiences satisfy the Global Engagement requirement. Not all courses are offered every semester. Courses should be chosen carefully, in consultation with the Departmental Faculty Advisor and your Student Success advisor. Track your progress using the program worksheet (below). See the university course catalog for spring 2024 Global Studies courses that fulfill these requirements.
Introductory courses (6 credits):
- UGLB 2110 (Dis)Order and (In)Justice (3 credits)
- UGLB 2111 Global Economies (3 credits)
Other required courses (26-50 credits):
- 2 Knowledge Base electives (6-8 credits)
- 5 Global Challenges electives. Three must be taken within a single cluster (see Detailed Degree Requirements below) and three must be 3000-level or higher (15-20 credits)
- Foreign Language Proficiency. Usually equivalent to four semesters of college-level study. Not all foreign language courses are offered each term (0-16 credits)
- Collaborative Research Seminar (3-4 credits)
- UGLB 3903 Global Engagement Colloquium (Experiential Requirement; 2 credits)
Senior Capstone (1-4 credits):
- UGLB 4710 Senior Capstone Research Seminar (1-4 credits)
Total credits: 33-60
Introductory Core Courses: These courses introduce students to problems of the global order and justice and to the challenges of the global political economy.
Knowledge Base electives: These electives provide fundamental introductions to the intricate workings of economics, politics, society, and culture as well as the relationship between the questions we ask and the methods we use to explore our world.
Global Challenges electives: These electives provide mostly upper-level coursework in key areas of concern for Global Studies. They are grouped into four clusters (see below) and consist of courses offered both through the Global Studies program and throughout the university. Electives are grouped into four clusters. Students take at least three electives within one of these clusters:
- Places, Peoples, and Encounters: This cluster explores the lenses and identities through which we experience the world and how the global and local are linked in ways not always obvious to the casual observer or embedded participant. Courses focus on experiences and accounts of the global, including everyday life under globalization, personal and national identity, and the construction of hybrid, cosmopolitan, or transnational identities; other courses are aimed at "area" studies about specific countries or regions.
- Markets and States: This cluster concerns how the global is “ordered” — how the world we live in today is designed and arranged, constrained and enabled, by its institutions and structures. It focuses especially on the global economy, the international system and international institutions and interactions. Within these forms we encounter tensions between hierarchies and networks, state and non-state actors, flows and borders, rules and exceptions. This cluster aims to critically evaluate the assumptions, interests, and values behind the orders and alternatives that structure our field of action.
- Rights, Justice, and Governance: The success of development, the legitimacy of national policies, and the thin line between peace and war all hinge on the question of justice: What is right, what is just, and for whom? This cluster examines the challenge of achieving global justice and the attendant attempts to justly govern global flows of people, goods, money, and information. Courses deal with questions such as: How are laws and norms changing under globalization? What contradictions and tensions are produced by human rights today? Is humanitarian intervention a moral imperative or an imperialist fantasy? Can wars be just? Can past injustice ever be adequately dealt with? Is there a global civil society that can provide a legitimate counter to corporate or state power?
- Global Spaces (Urban, Media, and Environment): This cluster focuses on three global spaces where The New School has special analytical strengths. Cities are indelibly local yet inescapably inscribed by global flows of money, people, and trade. Contemporary media confounds the scale between local and global while transforming our identities, perceptions, and reactions, as well as power relations. The environment knows no borders: Global flows can result in very local challenges, and local problems reverberate at global scales. All of these spaces are linked by the challenge of how we design our cities, our forms of information, and our relationship to the environment. Courses in this cluster link explicitly to cutting-edge work in design carried out at The New School.
Advanced Research Projects: Students undertake 1) a collaborative research seminar, usually in their junior year, and 2) a thesis or equivalent capstone project in their senior year, usually developed and written as part of the two-semester Directed Research Seminar, which is a capstone seminar through which students work under the direction of a faculty member to develop and write their thesis or final project.
Languages: Global Studies students must also demonstrate at least an advanced-intermediate level of foreign language proficiency. This can be satisfied by coursework, by taking a placement exam for the proper level, or by passing a proficiency exam. Students may start a new language or improve their skills in an existing one.
Global Engagement: Students complete at least one experience working outside the classroom, chosen in consultation with their advisor, on issues relevant to global studies. These include but are not limited to study abroad, internship experience, collaborative studios, and client-based and intensive group fieldwork projects in New York or worldwide. This is usually a non-credit requirement but requires a report on the experience.