Someone Told You to Pick One Subject. They Might Have Been Wrong.

Presidency School of Liberal Arts and Sciences

 

Picture a student who has been learning Bharatanatyam since she was six. Somewhere in Class 11 she falls for psychology too, the kind of interest that keeps her reading long after the exam is over. Then, at a family function, someone asks the question: "So, what are you going to do?"

 

The advice that follows is almost always the same. Pick one thing and focus. Science or commerce. Your passion or your career.

 

It sounds sensible. For a lot of students, it isn't the right call.

 

Why choose liberal arts? Because you don't have to choose

 

The Presidency School of Liberal Arts and Sciences (SOLAS) builds its three-year B.A. programmes as double majors, so you study two subjects properly. Our dancer could take Classical Dance and Psychology together and give up neither.

 

Some pairings are familiar, like History and Political Science or English and History. Others are less expected: Psychology and Economics, Communication and Media with Psychology, or Political Science and Sociology. Classical Dance, Western Music and Theatre Studies each pair with Psychology or English, and Classical Music pairs with Psychology.

 

Realised halfway through Class 12 that your stream isn't really you? That's more common than you'd think. The B.A. (Psychology, Economics), for example, welcomes students from Arts, Science and Commerce.

 

"But what about jobs?"

 

Every liberal arts student gets asked this, usually by a relative. The answer is better than most people expect.

 

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 surveyed more than 1,000 employers across 55 economies. The skill they wanted most was analytical thinking, with seven in ten calling it essential. Creative thinking, resilience, curiosity and lifelong learning are all expected to matter more by 2030, and the report estimates that 39% of workers' current skills will change or become outdated by then.

 

When the technical details keep shifting, a degree that teaches you to think, argue, write and learn quickly starts to look less like a risk and more like insurance.

 

The humanities keep making headlines

 

If you think studying history or literature means memorising dates, the last couple of years tell a different story.

 

In June 2026, the Vesuvius Challenge team read an entire ancient scroll without ever unrolling it. It had been burnt to carbon when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. X-ray scans and machine learning found the ink, but it took scholars of ancient Greek to work out what the text actually said.

 

On 8 October 2026, the Nobel Prize in Literature went to Anne Carson, a Canadian poet and professor of classics. Closer to home, Banu Mushtaq's Heart Lamp became the first Kannada book to win the International Booker Prize in May 2025, with the prize shared equally with her translator, Deepa Bhasthi.

 

Each of those stories needed people trained in languages, literature or history.

 

Art is taken seriously here

 

Dancers and musicians know how often their art gets treated as a hobby. At SOLAS it's treated as a subject worth debating. On 28 September 2026, the School hosted a Performing Arts Colloquium with Nrityantar Academy of Performing Arts on the theme "Beyond the Performance: What Sustains an Art?", where students put their questions to a panel that included Smt Leela Venkataraman, Guru Ratikant Mohapatra and Dr Choodamani Nandagopal. The School also offers diplomas in Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kuchipudi and Mohiniyattam.

 

Learning that goes beyond the classroom

 

In the B.A. (Psychology, Economics), there's an internship in the fifth semester and a capstone project in the sixth. The School's Department of Languages runs IELTS coaching, foreign language certification and CEFR-aligned language labs, with courses in English, Kannada, French and Mandarin. That's useful if studying or working abroad is part of your plan.

 

So, is it for you?

 

It probably is if you keep asking "but why?", read well past the syllabus, and enjoy noticing how one subject connects to another. It's also worth a look if you're not sure about one fixed career yet, or if you are sure but don't want to lose your second love along the way.

 

The full list of combinations is on the School's page, and our BA subjects list is a good place to start comparing.

 

Someone probably told you to pick one. You don't have to.