Deep versus broad knowledge in interdisciplinary education

Development in interdisciplinary areas has become faster in recent decades and encompasses many fields. Specialists in individual fields naturally regard their own area for the most important one. This brings quite frequently tension to discussions about new curricula development or restructuring existing curricula. However, we have to keep in mind that the curricula has limited number of courses, should be studied in limited time and it is impossible to think that students become experts in all studied fields. We discussed and analysed these issues many times in EAEEIE, various projects and with experts from the industry and other areas where the graduates find their jobs. The conclusion we agreed on is that in particular in engineering the study must not be separated from reality and real-life applications. In the paper we will discuss these issues in more detail and show on the case of computer science courses and biomedical engineering program how difficult is to define properly the curricula respecting the requirements from practice and giving students solid theoretical background.