Op-ed: UCLA must support interdisciplinary education through its budgeting decisions

This post was updated Oct. 27 at 11:10 p.m.
This fall, UCLA launched an interdisciplinary data science initiative named DataX. Motivated by “the ever-expanding role of data in society” and backed by a $10 million seed investment, DataX will “expand opportunities for students across the disciplines,” including the creation of “interdisciplinary DataX cluster courses … accessible to students without extensive technical backgrounds.” Once the seed money runs out, the long-term success of interdisciplinary curricula initiatives like DataX depends on having a university budget model that supports interdisciplinarity.