Five Questions

Do professionals dealing with broadscale problems need more multidisciplinary skill?
Is education today multidisciplinary enough?
In soft science, what is the best approach to multidisciplinary education?
What has been the progress in the last 50 years?
How can things be moved along faster?

Question 1 and 2: is more multidisciplinary skill needed?

To answer this, we should ask

will more multidisciplinary improve bad thinking?

Multidisciplary mental models approach

avoids the man with a hammer syndrome
avoids bias that serves the subject more than the application of the subject

what causes bad thinking in the first place?
- education is too undisciplined
- education is too divided

Question 3: what is now the goal?

Follow the pilot's training approach

wide formal educations
practice-based fluency of core material
forward and backward thinking trained
training emphasized by measure of importance
checklist routines mandatory
continuous maintenance to avoid atrophy

we need ... to have multidisciplinary coverage of immense amplitude, with all needed skills raised to an ever-maintained practice-based fluency, including considerable power of synthesis at boundaries between disciplines, with the highest fluency levels being achieved where they are most needed, with forward and reverse thinking techniques being employed in a manner reminding one of inversion in algebra, and with "checklist" routines being a permanent part of the knowledge system

All mental models should focus on the fundamental big ideas in each subject. They carry most of the weight and are generally not too difficult to grasp. fundamental ideas are more useful generally than narrow expertise.

Question 4: Considering the pilot program approach, how much has elite soft-science education improved in recent years?

yes, but there is still much to be done. Essentially, they've implemented an open sharing culture which is good is inefficient and, in some cases, counter-productive.

Ok so what should be done?

more courses outside the primary focus should be mandatory
there should be much more practical problem solving
increase the use of business periodicals like Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, etc.
avoid professors with passionate ideology
soft science should imitate the organizational ethos of hard science:
- prefer more fundamental disciplines
- master and practice regularly the essentials of the four hard sciences
- prefer the most fundamental concepts in any explanation; and attribute the explanation appropriately
- create new principles, and prove old ones wrong when evidence suggest it

The happier mental realm I recommend is one from which no one willingly returns. A return would be like cutting off one's hands.