International Relations and Politics

What is the difference between International Relations and International Studies major?

10zin k asked:


What is the difference between International Relations and International Studies major?

I have been reading about these majors in different colleges and they seem to be almost the same. So can some please clarify the differences, big and small.

Thanks

Tags: Colleges, International Relations, Majors

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Higher Education (University +). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “What is the difference between International Relations and International Studies major?”

1. emilia391 says:

   July 2, 2008 at 1:34 am

   Woohoo! I was an IR major!
   Anyway, I don’t believe that one school will offer BOTH majors, so yes, for the most part you can assume they are similar. One big difference is that IR is a branch of Political Science and a recognized field, while International/Global Studies programs are going to be more of a hodge-podge of classes. At my school, IR was an interdisciplinary major with classes from the anthro, econ, soc, polisci and history departments (depending on your track- we had 4 ‘tracks’ within the IR major) and IS, from what I’ve heard, has even more. IS at many schools is very much just about the cultural aspect, while again IR is a science.
   So I guess all in all they ARE really similar, but an IR program would be more solid if you want to go into international work professionally afterward.