But other students say that area studies are welcome at the University.
"[Rational choice] is a healthy move toward rigor in studies," says Pepper D. Culpepper, a graduate student in comparative politics. "[But] the department maintains a lot of value for the importance of area studies."
Comparative politics student Mark E. Duckenfield says statistics and quantitative methods, not rational choice, have become the center of the department's focus, sometimes to the detriment of scholarship.
"It reminds me of the story of someone looking for his glasses under the light post. He may have lost them across the street, but he looks up at where the light post is. Statistics are the light post," he says.
But perhaps the harshest criticism comes from a former government department graduate student.
"There is a blindly social science approach which focuses on the science and ignores the social. It is unclear to students coming in that rational choice is going to be as dominant as it finally appears," says the student, who asked not to be identified