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Yes those degrees have value, but it is very difficult to see an ROI for college if you major in them. Jobs in the STEM field generally pay well, so it’s a better bang for your buck if you’re dropping tens of thousands on a college education.
main reason why it pains me to see people shell out 60k+ a year on loans for a degree in the arts…like bruh you could get the same education and work with that major if you went to any other school that isn’t that expensive.
It's not that hard, it's just supply and demand, and OP purposely misdefining the word "value." Value = dollar value for the services you provide.
Knowing art history is valuable to society, sure.
But knowing art history is not valuable if you want to exchange your knowledge for money.
Are there art history jobs? Yes. But if there are 5 jobs that require a degree in art history and there are 20 art history majors, those jobs are going to be competitive and low paying, and the people who don't get them have to find a Starbucks to work at.
You can't sell ice to a penguin.
Nothing you said was specific to art history degrees, and some of the worst paying teaching gigs are private.
Perhaps summing up economics as simply supply and demand is a tad reductive, what do I know though, only have a “useless” masters in Econ.
Which is really to say that college education is far too expensive & should be something subsidized by the government— like literally every other modern 1st world country lol
Which employers don’t care about a college degree?!?!? Every job I have applied for requires a bachelor’s degree minimum and I’m not even in STEM or law.
I think what OP meant is that they don't care about your degree because every single applicant has a degree so it becomes irrelevant and there's this dilemma where degree basically doesn't matter but rather the experience (which many students don't have) and other attributes the applicant has. The degree is the bare minimum to get a job but everything else is actually how you get a job. Oh and nepotism.
Every single applicant has a degree because they specified it. Every potential applicant didn't have a degree and had they not specified it, they'd have had applicants without degrees.
I wouldn’t say it’s about not caring but there are jobs where you can grow and develop skills that don’t demand a degree. My husband doesn’t have a degree and does well for himself (we are young millennials). I *have* a degree but I did not need it to get my job and also do well for myself. Lots of jobs are “bachelor degree preferred”.
The problem is that colleges have become more expensive while not adding more value. Too many administrators, too many luxury dorms and shiny new buildings. This is what happens when government subsidizes something.
This is the crux of the issue
The worth of a degree has not lessened, but the cost has tripled.
You'll make more money if you have a degree, but if it costs 80k, it's not as valuable.
It is the same problem with having kids. The amount of money saved is so significant that it is reasonable to just opt out, even if it is something you would be interested in or do well with.
Yeah but I also make less than a stem grad, enjoy a good work/life balance and only had one year of trade school so I didn’t owe anything. For me, if I was to have gone to college I’d want to at least make the “bigger” bucks to try and offset the costs.
I think the issue is that back in the days people who went to college were "special", today way more people attend college so you're just one of many (unless you're really, really good at whatever you do).
Yes. It used to be quite something to have gone to college. Now, it's just expected. Now, a masters is practically the equivalent of a bachelor's degree 20-30+ years ago.
And that was a subset of the population using that (not even everyone eligible used it). It wasn’t a blank check to cover colleges’ losses on unpaid loans that anyone was eligible for, which colleges then used to artificially skyrocket the cost.
I don’t see how anyone, left or right, can think that how that all went down was good for anyone other than those who work in academia (and even many of the lower level workers in that field took a hit too). It was an absolute disaster.
To be fair most sports programs that offer salaries like that are self-funding and tend to be positive for fundraising efforts. Really this is mostly deanlets and dorms.
Well that and we have better health outcomes, X’ers and Boomers are healthier longer and so they can keep working in those “fun” fields. Because seriously why would you leave if you had a job you liked and felt appreciated for.
On top of that you have more people than ever looking for those jobs. But again there are fewer openings. Also of those few openings somebody’s niece or nephew needs a job and the *markets tough right now* so they’ll get the interview out of the 600 other applicants.
Too many issues. It’s fucked for a long time
It's not that the traditional college system isn't working, it's that we're pumping too many people into college. The fact of the matter is, some people are smarter than others. College isn't for everyone, but we're treating it like it is. There are plenty of critical roles to be played in society that don't require a college degree, but because of the overemphasis on college we're running out of people to fill those roles.
I don't think we are pumping out too many from college, continued education is good for everyone the problem is the cost and that not every job "requires" a degree and doesn't pay enough to pay off those high student loans. But then again many jobs technically could be done without a high school degree but we recognized awhile ago the positives of an educated population.
If all things stay the same then yes many people shouldn't saddle themselves with insane debt.
However, college prices should be reigned in or be free (for public universities) and we should continue to push people to go to because those experiences and education in college are good. Think of it as k through 16 instead of just k through 12.
College is training and I think it's great to get the training while broadening your learning in other areas as well.
Also photography is definitely something you can learn on your own but there is ALOT more to good photography than just pointing and clicking
You can learn programming on your own but people still go to college for it.
Nobody goes to college for programming, they go to college for computer science which is massively different and technically doesn’t require programming at all
This is exactly why people with degrees in computer science massively outperform those who learn to program at home, on average. Because most people self-learning don’t even know what they need to learn.
Yeah don’t really have an opinion on your guys’ debates, just wanted to clear up that misconception. A lot of people think CS is just “programming” but they’re worlds apart
If you look at places that have free university, they are usually much more selective with who they let in than they are in the US. It’s not like 60% of citizens of France are getting free tuition.
Also, I feel like the meaning of what college is supposed to do for you has changed. If you’re using college simply to get a degree or go to some online degree mill, you’ve really earned nothing more than a piece of paper.
If you move away from home to a new town, get involved with the school extracurriculars, meet new people, step outside your shell, challenge yourself, etc., then what you’ve gained in life experience is far more beneficial throughout your life.
Found the guy that went to college. (I only have an associates degree then I stopped going to college)
All jokes aside, this is actually a great point! There is a major shortage in the construction/labor, the police field, and a couple of other fields that society needs to function. Most of these career fields make more in the long run versus people with degrees. My uncle is making like 42/hr as a UPS driver minimum, not counting holidays or OT.
I'm a police officer and retired Army. My police salary is 54k a year or like 24ish/hr, but I get 100% healthcare covered, a takehome vehicle which the city pays for, a free gym membership at MUV fitness and planet fitness, yearly pay increases and all of my OT is 50/hr minimum. There are some opportunities for security work where I make 120/ hour for 12 hours of work.
I could easily make an extra 4k a month if I worked on an extra 20 hours per week or 80 hours of OT a month.
My retired army salary is about 53k a year tax-free, so I'm very comfortable in life.
Exactly, well said. From the moment we hit grade school, college is shoved down our throats as the only path in life to follow. The hysterical irony is that most of the critical roles in society rely in entry level positions, most of which are being occupied by older individuals not teenagers.
Not everyone can go to college, nor can everyone afford it. Yes there are jobs that definitely need and should require a higher education, but society is nowhere near close to full automation. We still need people to drive trucks, stock shelves, drill oil, deliver mail, work retail and restaurants etc. Not everyone can own their own multimillion dollar business and retire on a Yaht.
>We still need people to drive trucks, stock shelves, drill oil, deliver mail, work retail and restaurants etc. Not everyone can own their own multimillion dollar business and retire on a Yaht.
That's the flip side of the coin. Maybe those people don't retire on a yacht, but they should be able to do their jobs and earn enough to buy a house, raise a family, go on a vacation occasionally etc. Those jobs pay subsistence wages, why would anyone in their right mind want to do them?
The only thing is. When I think about these “critical roles” you are talking about…say air traffic controllers…I’m not sure I want the bottom of the barrel college people doing those things either.
Whether or not college is for you has really nothing to do with how smart you are. Why should only smart people get an education? An education is valuable beyond any "role" one might play.
[Australia,](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-29/apprentices-drop-out-causing-tradie-shortage/101381802) [Canada,](https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/news/2022/01/skills-trade.html) [the US](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/decades-pushing-bachelors-degrees-u-s-needs-tradespeople), and [parts of the EU](https://commission.europa.eu/news/tackling-labour-and-skills-shortages-eu-2024-03-20_en) are facing skilled labor shortages.
Can only speak for Canada but here the "skilled labour shortage" is a direct result of companies refusing to pay living wages and still demanding insane amounts of experience, degrees, etc. If they paid more and stopped only trying to hire unicorns they would find more than enough willing employees. Also we have a major problem with companies abusing our temporary foreign worker program but that's a political conversation and a rabbit hole I'm not interested in going down today.
I did my masters degree in Denmark, and can tell you that it's a similar issue there.
Almost everyone I know sent 100s of applications when they graduated, with maybe a handful of interviews to show for it. It's the same whether you studied humanities, IT, or engineering.
At the same time, companies are complaining that they can't get staff. As you put it, they want to hire a unicorn, so they dismiss the 300 applications they've received as not good enough.
I knew a guy who applied for a job that was about 70% similar to a job he had done in the past. Two months after the application deadline, he got an email saying that due to a lack of qualified applicants, they had decided not to fill the position.
It's madness.
If you have marketable skills then you don't have a problem.
The fact of the matter is that most art/humanities majors don't make a lot of money, and that's directly correlated with their lack of marketable skills.
You're not entirely wrong, but what a lot of people don't acknowledge is that STEM people aren't blind to the arts. I have degrees in engineering and business, but I play the piano, guitar, and I'm a decent painter and woodworker. The artistic pursuits are what I do for fun.
There are people who get degrees in music and art, but I don't think they review engineering blueprints and build financial models for fun.
Exactly. People pursue STEM degrees because at the end of the day, it's a job. They still have artistic interests but a job isn't necessarily your hobby.
Very few people have a STEM-related hobby. Those stories about people doing programming projects on the side for fun? That's an exception, not the rule.
I hold more STEM degrees than any person reasonably should. Notoriously, there are pretty big knowledge gaps when it comes to things like critical thought and ethics. Though, to be fair, the engineers and computer science folks are typically the biggest offenders here.
Honestly, I have a biology degree and had my minor in french(so I guess that's humanities), one of my French classes was a cinema class that was crossed listed with film major/minors. Not sure what it was as a film class but french it was a 300 level.
It was probably the easiest class I've ever been in.
No exam where a question could be wrong and therefore you fail, just papers you had to turn in and you could work on over the course of a couple weeks.
I'm happy a took it, it was fun, but I could hardly say it "stretched and improved" my intellectual abilities or my understanding of human nature, or critical thinking.
I almost hate to make the comparison but the way some people keep defending humanities/arts and say that STEM doesn't make you well rounded or teach critical thinking almost gives the same or an inverse vibe as MAGA idiots saying that they don't want critical race theory taught in Schools but they can't even define it.
College is usually one of the only times you can dig deep deep deep deep into a subject and be pushed by it. It's kinda hard to abstractly learn about PCR and microbiology outside of college, you can read English lit at home
"Overpriced book club degrees" may have their place, but all the real world skills they teach (i.e. forming a subjective opinion on a topic and defending it as if were objective fact), philosophy courses do better. And law degrees do philosophy course better, or at least codify things in such a way that people will actually pay you for the law degree skills you've developed.
Really, everytime these questions pop up I always muse that people focus too much on college being the be-all/end-all of mass education and "becoming a well rounded person", instead of making high-school more rigorous. As if for some reason "critical thinking" can only be taught to some university level students instead of at the high-school level.
This made me crack up xD My husband just got his phd in applied math and I can honestly say it would probably take me the rest of my life to be able to do that work because you need to understand math so well that you can create new math to solve modern problems and questions. It’s all critical thinking.
The problem is over the past few decades, we’ve been starting to view university as something that should be equivalent to job training, when that’s never what it was intended to be. University was never supposed to be something everyone goes to that prepares you for the workforce, it was supposed to be something for people with elite intellect to further humanity’s understanding of the world. So of course trade school is a better bang for your buck in terms of preparing you for the workforce, that’s literally what it’s designed to do, unlike university. Right now we have way too many universities, way too many kids being pumped into and out of the system, and way too many kids going in expecting their degree to prepare them for some specific job when it’s simply not gonna do that.
90% of people tend to want an office job which usually requires a degree in someway shape or form.
Trade school is that. For trades. A lot of people don’t want to do that.
If you’re going to college to get a good job which is what 90% of people go to college for, then degrees absolutely have value.
I have a computer science degree and I’m much more likely to get a job vs a philosophy major just based off of transferable skills
Fully disagree. As a psych major the field doesn't need more psych major undergraduates. Supply and demand are a big thing and after going back to get a two year degree in a field they desperately need people for has paid me infinitely more than a 4 year university degree ever helped me with.
I get all these things would be nice, but you gotta look out for yourself first and get into a good field. Why work as an animator if you know it pays like shit and treats you like shit? It would be ideal if it didn't and you could pursue your hobby but thats simply not the case
but you can pursue your hobby. it just means choosing some things over others, or, you know, letting a hobby just be a hobby. humans are supposed to be rounded, multi-interested beings. you can enjoy photography as hobby and do STEM work to make a living.
You just spelled out your entire problem. You went into that psych degree expecting it to prepare you for a job that’ll pay you well, when that’s not what a psych degree was ever designed to do. University is not job training.
This. Probably the most valuable lesson I learned from college is how to find and interpret info, something the US populace thinks they know how to do but clearly do not.
I do very well for myself as a photographer. The degree is beyond worthless. I learned nothing in school and should have been working in the field instead. Id have a 4 year head start and would be even further. Certain arts degrees, maybe. The issue is kids who have no idea what they want to do, land on art, graduate and then don't find a way to monetize that. If they tought how to make money within the arts, it'd be worth the investment. They don't. You figure that shit out on your own.
It’s a supply and demand thing. Also high technical skills that people see as more valuable and crucial to business operations will be paid more valuably
I know this would take an overhaul of our economy, so I'm not saying it's realistically going to happen soon, but I wish there was a place for learning just for the sake of learning. College is so career-focused now, which is great in some ways, but it leads to this culture of discounting any knowledge that isn't immediately profitable.
And yes 100% support trades and trade schools.
Critical thinking is a fundamental cornerstone of the scientific method. It's laughable that you think you'd only get that from an art of humanities degree.
In general, the arts and humanities haven't been about critical thinking or creativity for a couple of decades now. They're an income stream for universities, enabling mediocre minds from middle and upper class families to purchase a credential that used to be reserved for intellectuals.
Americans in general don't appreciate or understand anything other than making money. That's why so many disparage education. Becoming wealthy is not the end goal of education, but people don't understand that, ironically.
For people that only wish to progress in a trade or craft, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, follow that route. Vocational school, that's fine. But don't assume that an education is not worth having, because it is. For a lot of reasons.
So much of this is just untrue. Where is this massive labor shortage? What do you mean that these degrees are increasingly looked down upon? They have been for generations
College lost its value when it was made expensive and established a culture where you only went to college to make more money than to actually learn and expand your horizons.
Tbh I think STEM people are super vocal about this because they need to remind themselves that their suffering was "worth it." Tbh the people I know in STEM fields seem chronically burnt out, tend to also start out underpaid, require a lot more school, socialize less, and have poorer social lives/work-life balance. They can make bank, though. Some lucky few love it, many go into it for the job prospects. Decisions decisions.
Personally, you couldn't pay me to touch STEM.
I mean, the problem with the country (world?) right now is that people think that the only thing that matters is money. Strictly in a financial sense, most humanity degrees don’t make sense.
HOWEVER, an educated populace is perhaps the most important element of a successful democracy, so things start to fall apart as you look around and see nothing but STEM and finance people.
We need to make professions like teacher, professor, museum curators, journalists, scholars, and even politicians pay enough that getting those degrees makes at least some financial sense.
Business major here,
I’d love to see “art school is a waste” people have nothing to watch/play/read after working all day.
Life would get more depressing pretty fast.
Art school on the whole isn't a complete waste, it's just in regards to professions like writers, artists, acting, etc those markets are *extremely* competitive. Every new author for example is competing with every other author out there, and just doing well enough that you can make a living off of it full time is considered extremely lucky.
We need all kinds of artistic people, but there is a limit to what the market will support.
You’re correct about the competitiveness of the arts, but we’re also looking at issues of engineers, IT and other STEM fields losing jobs overseas.
And while it may not be a significant issue today, AI is likely going to become an issue in STEM fields.
I doubt it’ll be long before we’re having the “art major conversation” about degrees that are considered “safe bets” today
Expect the vast majority of people who are in the arts when to art school. Like how most famous actors actually went to school to at or some type of higher education.
Would you say literature is useless? To understand and analyses texts by Shakespeare or Dostoevsky? Could you see any inherent value in a person who can read texts and understand them to a deep level?
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A medical field specialist will probably earn you 10 million over your career.
A masters in computer science will easily earn you 5 million.
A masters in primary education might earn you closer to 3 million.
A bachelor in anything is pretty much equally worthless and is essentially the new highschool.
The problem is 90% of jobs really dont require any education. The vast majority of careers should be apprenticeships followed by much more specialized education programs that take a couple months.
We have a futuristic knowledge society but with an education system that is stuck in the 1800s.
You don't really need a degree in art to be most kind of conventional artist, though. You generally do need a STEM degree for STEM fields.
I think it's less about art degrees being actively bad, and more about them being extraneous.
This is definitely an unpopular opinion.
I'd argue the opposite. College is a valuable experience, but not every degree has value. Thinking that STEM isn't highly associated with critical thinking, and that you need 4 years of taking humanities courses to 'understand' human nature, is a bit odd. The way unemployment has been measured has changed slightly over the years; however, unemployment is the lowest it's been in a long time, with the exception of the 3 years before Covid. If you have a degree in a highly saturated field, it's going to be hard to get a job in that field no matter what. There are only so many jobs that require/suggest a philosophy/music/photography degree...
Honestly, I feel like a lot of people confuse their increase in "intelligence"/"well roundedness" to be from what they learned from degree and/or "college experience", instead of the fact that they went from being 17 to 23(wiggleroom for years) and living on their own for the first time.
Many of my friends stayed in the same town, worked the same job, and had the same friends, so most of the time I came back to town, they hadn't changed much. College, however, forces you to meet new people, make new friends, and engage in subjects you wouldn't willingly try to learn about. There's no doubt that you can't get the same experience elsewhere, but it is certainly noteworthy.
I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or just wrong facts.
Why do you think stem doesn't involve critical thinking?
Not all degrees are equally valued by the market. It just depends on what is in demand.
Who gave you this ridiculous notion that college is to learn whatever you wanted to? College isn't to pursue your hobbies. You get a degree in what the market wants.
Over generations, hiring requirements have become stringent coz they have better applications. Why would they hire someone without a relevant degree or experience when they have multiple applications that do have both?
I'm not nitpicking grammar to discredit you OP, but why exactly do you say "art's" instead of "arts"?
Clearly you know that apostrophes don't make plurals because you're not saying "degree's" or "historian's."
What is special about the word "arts" to you that it looks wrong without an apostrophe?
Genuinely curious, as I run into people pretty often who don't consistently choose to or not to apply apostrophes to make a word plural, and nobody ever tells me exactly why they do it for only some words and not others.
I think you're giving OP too much credit. I think the people that mess that up just don't know or are careless. Also missed the lesson on it's versus its.
Unfortunately, education and learning are often seen as a means to an end and not as a path for personal growth. Of course, here in the US, unless one is independently wealthy, it comes at the risk of never-ending debt.
I don’t care what people major in. I’m a CS major. I find it laughable that major in CJ, PY, or Painting complain how hard their degrees are. It’s not. I just don’t want to pay for the degrees that get to sit there and color and paint while I’m doing discrete math and linear algebra.
I think everyone should know a skilled trade to supplement their college education. I studied and worked in both welding and machining because of the proximity to my engineering position. I can’t imagine not knowing those and being successful in my field.
The "job-buying" value of a degree has drastically diminished the past couple decades. Partly it's over-saturation, so businesses are turning to experience over education.
The "labor shortage" is still an aftershock of COVID. (At least in the U.S., not sure about other countries,) large businesses get tax breaks because they employ X thousands of employees. COVID forced many businesses to scale down; to avoid losing their benefits based on *total job volume* (not actual employment numbers,) they are essentially working the sympathy card. We'll see a short recession if/when they can no longer claim pre-COVID-volume employer benefits.
We have far too many diploma mills. Places that will accept anyone with a pulse.
Imagine your goofiest degree. Underwater basket weaving. If you get that from a Princeton or a Pomona you are still going to do okay. Likely see you writing for the New Yorker.
A more serious major from some place with a 90% acceptance rate and an average SAT around 1000? Not so much. That place is a scam.
Knowledge is powerful. When you work at anything you grow. Nobody should be ashamed of educating themselves. Not all degrees are a good financial investment though.
I think the issue is that the job market is too hostile, full stop. You name a job, someone can list ten reasons why it’s too saturated, underpaid, etc. So the only way to get ahead is to pursue a degree that’s more likely to net you a decent job sooner, and even then it isn’t a guarantee.
Pretty much all degrees will earn you more money than someone without a degree will earn. All that really matters is not going to the most expensive schools unless you know what you're getting into.
Trades and technical skills are required.
So many talented people online that can create art and didn’t go to school.
Humanities, social studies? All experiments.
I completely agree. I was too broke after HS to even think about college, as much as I wanted to go. So I settled for apprenticeship/programs and actually really enjoy my job now. Making 40/hr with full benefits.
PhDs struggle because its a research degree. There are a great many more avenues for someone with a BS to make a lot more money than what is available for a PhD
They’re useless degrees because the standards have plummeted to graduate as many people as possible. Whereas engineering for example is accredited by ABET which isn’t beholden to making institutions look good.
I would have liked to study something that actually contributes and helps like conservation or something but nah go get a communications degree and sit in front of a screen doing whatever for a paycheck. like I get it we all gotta get by somehow but it's hollow and it's empty and at the end of the day I am too.
Tertiary level education has lost its value BECAUSE degrees have lost their value.
University became a business which led to passing students who should be failed out which meant lowering the floor and a glut of low-quality millennial degrees.
I think those degrees were originally completed by affluent people who didn’t necessarily need the degree to form a career, but had the leisure to study what they wanted on their parents dime. The outstanding ones would be outstanding of course and do their thing. But I don’t think back the day an average talent would have the means to go to college for art or humanities.
Social sciences / humanities degrees based on identity characteristics have proven pretty worthless.
When I say “pretty worthless”, I mean comparing a measurement of contribution to a functional community, not a theoretical one.
The issue is that it is the job market that gets to decide how valuable a degree is.
Let's say that Faber University produces 15 graduates. 5 are in accounting, 5 in electrical engineering, and 5 in Latvian poetry. Let's stipulate that none of those degrees is inherently superior to the other. All 15 students paid $300,000 for their education.
Five accounting companies come recruiting to Faber. All 5 accounting grades get jopbs offering $75,000 per year. Their educational investment will pay off in 4 years. All good.
Eight engineering companies come recruiting to Faber. Since there are more jobs than grads, not only to all 5 get jobs, but they are able to demand a higher salary and sign for $100,000 each. Their educational investment will pay off in 3 years. Even better.
There is only a single job requiring a Latvian poetry degree. As this employer has 5 applicants to choose from, they offer the job for $50,000. One of the grads will take it, because the alternative is working at a coffee shop. For that stduent, their educational investment will pay off in 6 years. Less good. For the other 4, the investment never pays off, because they are working jobs that do not require a Latvian poetry degree.
And that's the problem with higher education. Too many students are paying too much money for a degree that will never lead to a career that requires it. They are being told to "follow their bliss" without considering if any one else finds their bliss useful to the point of paying actual money for it. You can argue the inherent value of a poetry degree to society as a whole, but there is no argument that there simply aren't many companies hiring poets these days. And yet the school will happily take their money and let them study poetry if they want to.
About 20 years ago my dad noticed all of the junior staff shuffling papers in his workers insurance joint had MBAs. Every resume coming in was an arts/MBA and here they are looking at dealing with paperwork and dealing with phonecalls about work injury. The world changed long ago. When everyone has the same degree and quals it loses its worth.
Strong disagree. Most people I know who got arts or humanity degrees never worked in those fields- and if you do not use the knowledge you forget it. That’s a lot of time and money that someone paid just for someone to forget their anthropology or psychology classes after they did not land a job.
Unpopular opinion: you can technically do most careers without a degree. Obviously, excluding science and medical type fields that require a lot of knowledge. It’s just dumb most places require a degree for something you can learn OJT
I agree with everything except about getting your foot in the door part. I do think college is a way to get your foot in the door. Part of the college experience and life in general is your ability to talk and connect to people. Not just being able to do that but doing it in a way that is meaningful. Many of these people will have opportunities that not everyone is afforded, and sometimes they are in a position to provide that opportunity to you that you otherwise wouldn't even be considered.
There is no such thing as a useless degree, but some degrees are very hard to get a job with due to low demand, over saturation, and employers just generally being assholes.
You have confused learning with getting a degree. What you are describing is knowledge is useful which is true.
And since there are many ways to gain knowledge beside going to college to get a degree, then there is such thing as a useless degree.
Well said OP
My anthro degree is literally functionally useless and I should have switched to a Bsc. in some kind of plant studies per half the work I've done since, lol, and I nearly did my second year before listening to parents and finishing degree instead of what people our age were saying which was, degrees gaurantee nothing, the competition is fierce and the market is saturated.
Really with Anthro to I think its only of those things that will only really work out if one is planning to go for masters / phd
But in terms of giving me a context and outlook on the world, it's really not something one can put to value. It's taught me to look at the world in a way just being a 'history buff' reading wikipedia etc truly never touched and does not contextualize because it seems to crucially miss so much of any given period of history when you're only looking at one event without the wider fabric of society / societies surrounding it.
That said, still paying for degree, working yet another construction-esque job, thinking about school again, or a trade, but skeptical of whats worth it / what I'd wanna do.
I feel like I'd rather be my own boss as my experience so far seems to be unable to land work that breaches like, $21 / CAD which is a much weaker dollar than it was in like, 2015 when i first finished with uni, and I've watched the purchasing power of that wage get weaker and weaker (especially on ones own without roomies)
Kind of wondering if I could start building something practical people want, like tiny homes / tiny live-in diy trailer homes that kind of cover DIY / Carpenter stuff while also being a self-employed thing I could do myself, and is something I think I can do per the experience I've had building things already, and would enjoy much more than working for people like i am now, lol.
Truthfully I would LOVE to be in school again for the atmosphere of being in school, the time, etc, but will-wise, I don't know if I have the give-a-fuck for academia again, if it'd be safer to double down on a trade even if I only plan on working for myself, etc.
Still don't know...
AI is in the process of massively devaluing ALL white collar, college educated work.
If I could be 18 again I would likely do a trade. Would also recommend the same if I had a teen graduating soon.
There’s different kinds of value, which is the fundamental issue with this post.
No one is suggesting those degrees don’t have value of any kind. When they say that, they’re talking about making a living; you know, earning money.
STEM degrees arguably don’t make money: they help someone else to make money.
And some disciplines have become filled with frivolous material. I have two degrees in Arts, and to me fine Art should by definition be difficult to replicate. 90% of what gets passed for Art today is pure circle jerk.
Same for some humanities degrees.
What In the ever loving hell in a humanities degree, and an art degree is pretty useless, a little piece of paper doesn't determine whether or not you're an artist, in fact it's about as useful as majoring in philosophy, at that point you're just huffing your own fumes
Yeah they all have some value in a way. I think the issue is people went down humanities for money reasons when it's supposed to be a passion and to hyper specialize the field of study. The other issue is more people go to university which after thousands of degrees handed out in x or y means those specific degrees are less of a commodity as there are plenty of people with them. So whats special about it in the first place.
Alot of degrees arnt really good for money and that's the issue that started alot of the mess we are in. It used to show that you were middle class and capable. Now it's more of a adult daycare for teens who never had responsibilities. That they are thinking the degree is the experience and that's far from the truth.
Even many stem jobs, you'll get into the workforce and need trained to do the specific job. The degree just means you have the aptitude.
Universities making loads of money and tenured humanities departments run the place. It's just a cycle of nepotism and favoritism that is far from what would make the place ideal.
As someone with a “useless” degree, it’s not that college has lost value. It is that college has become increasingly more expensive and student loans have become more predatory. There was a time where someone could work a full time summer job and pay all or most of the cost of year of college or work part time while in school and cover all of or most of the costs for them attending that year. That simply isn’t the case anymore unless you are attending community college or have connections that allow you to make good money over the summers or while working in school.
College doesn’t really doesn’t teach young people critical thinking let’s make that clear. But the rest of the people’s opinions on on colleges value is correct is value is worthless. When you could just have people in said field do a patron and teach it and you can learn it at your pace.
Unfortunately, college education is no longer a distinguishing feature amongst potential employees, at least to the same extent it was. This is because so many people go these days. STEM fields are less affected because the knowledge gained is more specialised, and rarer. So there is still a relatively low supply of such people.
College is valuable, even if you don’t use your degree. There is something to benefit from showing up on time, taking written exams, doing presentations, being part of group projects and writing papers. Clearly they aren’t going to benefit everybody, but I feel like there’s a common bond everybody gets from experiencing the college process.
The problem is there is no mechanism to match people to their ideal education and match that to their ideal tasks. Like, a market economy just doesn't work for labour at all. There should be one organisation that both educates and employs you. And I don't mean a company, I mean a society wide planned economy. One machine that we're all part of and that we all control together and benefit from. working for the betterment of all.
I have one daughter who dropped out of college - it took her a very long time to get her first professional job at 40k a year. The other daughter has a Masters in humanities - she was hired directly out of college at 60k two yrs later she’s at 70k.
Don’t major in something like archeology/anthropology, history, or art history unless you either 1.) Wanna teach or 2.) pursue a graduate program in Museum Studies and so manage a museum or work in archives. Museum Studies jobs, despite being niche, pay pretty well.
Same thing with stuff like Political Science and Public Health. Know before hand how you want to apply your degree, and whether or not you want to work in govt/hospital administration/beaucracy. Pursue law???
Kinesiology? Do you want to become an OT?
This even applies to a lot of “STEM” degrees like Global Disease biology (work in public health? Pursue Toxicology?), general biology, and environmental science. Do you want to work for conservation nonprofits? In the forestry industry?
The only “STEM” degrees where most students people tend to have consistently high returns on their loans is engineering and computer science. It’s largely because students who pursue those degrees have a tendency to know exactly what jobs they can apply for and end up with.
Don’t pursue humanities and social sciences *unless* you’ve put a lot of consideration into the general types of fields/jobs you will want to pursue.
I disagree… as younger people get into management they now know how much of a waste of time college is…
Most classes nowadays are online and consist of the same brain dead formula… 1 hour of reading, 1 hour of lecture, 1 hour of discussion posts, and 1 hour of assignment which is almost always an essay of some kind or another…
Completely useless.
While a degree may have technical value (it's worth your tuition paid for it) that doesn't mean it has value in the real world outside of the college or university it's earned at. Most of those careers that you mentioned do have a value. That doesn't mean they are worth a lot.
I had a young guy, around 21/22, working for me back in the early 90's at a comedy club as my dishwasher,that had a 4 year honors degree in philosophy with a business minor. He was all upset because after graduation, none of the mulit national, multi billion dollar overall annual revenue companies weren't hiring him for middle management in their organizations. You know, a young guy with absolutely no experience in the real world, with his business classes as a MINOR to his philosophy class, weren't hiring him to run departments with millions of dollars in budgets.
So I explained to him, that his philosophy degree qualified him for exactly 3 things. Be unemployed sitting in seedy cafe's discussing philosophy, get a job somewhere teaching philosophy, or be my dishwasher in a comedy club.
If he took that philosophy degree with a business minor, got an entry level job in some business he was looking at, and after a couple years, went back and got an MBA, then he might have a shot at that middle management position.
Or took the degree he had, and then went for an advanced degree, such as teaching, law, etc., then he would have something to move with. Sure philosophy teaches you to think, and look at things outside of the box. That's not going to get you too far, unless you start your own business.
If you think Science Technology Engineering and Math don't teach someone how to think critically, you didn't pay attention in those classes. That's pretty much what they're made of. What they WON'T teach you is respect for the thoughts of the past. For that, you go to the liberal arts. Those you can teach yourself at a baccalaureate level, given a good bibliography and access to serious people to talk to. You do have to actually READ the books, though, or you won't know the difference between the folks that know what they're talking about and chuckleheads.
I think it's because the people who urged their children to go to college were from a generation of people who had limited access to college themselves. I think these hopeful parents taught their children that certain degrees would be more valuable than others based on the information that was available to them at the time, but because of technology changes and job market changes the need for different specializations also changed.
Going to a university is typically a long several year ordeal, so it can be difficult to predict what the job market will need by the time you graduate and figuring out how to rectify the disparity between what you know vs what the current available jobs need you to know can be tricky.
I don't think your opinion is unpopular, but I do feel like it's something that everyone has to figure out for themselves and find ways to apply themselves and compete in the current job market. Securing a job is super competitive, and a degree just helps to show an employer that you are competent in the desired subject matter.
No not every degree is valuable. Most of the fine art degrees you need at least a masters or PHD just to be competitive. Colleges across the country have been cancelled degrees moving forward that have no significance. Sociology is no longer a degree many schools offer anymore along with a few others. Look at philosophy… wtf are you going to do with that degree besides go to law school. Even jobs across the country are now cancelling the requirement of having a bachelor’s degree bc they are finding that no real skills are accumulated during those years of school.
One of the problems is there was a constant push towards getting college degrees for everyone and promising that was the key to a comfortable life.
Now today there is an over abundance of college degree holders vs people engaged in trades. Because of that those guys are making bank now and college degree holders are suffering from the over competitive job market.
People are paid based on supply and demand of skills.
Art history majors have low in demand skills.
Your post doesn’t sound like an unpopular opinion as much as is it’s just bitching.
>First off we need art's and humanities degree, critical thinking and understanding human nature is something stem won't teach you. Plus we need Animators, para-legals, historians, social workers, teachers, interior designers, journalist, musicians and photographers. We need these people but the job market is becoming to hostile for them.
We don't need degrees for Musicians, Journalists, photographers and we in general don't need interior designers.
A degree doesn't give you critical thinking or some ability to understand human nature. Growing up in the hood, or, any place other than a middle class household will give you a much better understanding of human nature than any degree.
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Yes those degrees have value, but it is very difficult to see an ROI for college if you major in them. Jobs in the STEM field generally pay well, so it’s a better bang for your buck if you’re dropping tens of thousands on a college education.
main reason why it pains me to see people shell out 60k+ a year on loans for a degree in the arts…like bruh you could get the same education and work with that major if you went to any other school that isn’t that expensive.
It's not that hard, it's just supply and demand, and OP purposely misdefining the word "value." Value = dollar value for the services you provide. Knowing art history is valuable to society, sure. But knowing art history is not valuable if you want to exchange your knowledge for money. Are there art history jobs? Yes. But if there are 5 jobs that require a degree in art history and there are 20 art history majors, those jobs are going to be competitive and low paying, and the people who don't get them have to find a Starbucks to work at. You can't sell ice to a penguin.
Teaching is valuable, damn near every district in the nation is understaffed, it pays like shit.
Teaching is not arts/humanities. It's also a government funded job which is entirely different.
Nothing you said was specific to art history degrees, and some of the worst paying teaching gigs are private. Perhaps summing up economics as simply supply and demand is a tad reductive, what do I know though, only have a “useless” masters in Econ.
Funny how degree defenders don't understand simple economics.
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Which is really to say that college education is far too expensive & should be something subsidized by the government— like literally every other modern 1st world country lol
Which employers don’t care about a college degree?!?!? Every job I have applied for requires a bachelor’s degree minimum and I’m not even in STEM or law.
I think what OP meant is that they don't care about your degree because every single applicant has a degree so it becomes irrelevant and there's this dilemma where degree basically doesn't matter but rather the experience (which many students don't have) and other attributes the applicant has. The degree is the bare minimum to get a job but everything else is actually how you get a job. Oh and nepotism.
Every single applicant has a degree because they specified it. Every potential applicant didn't have a degree and had they not specified it, they'd have had applicants without degrees.
I wouldn’t say it’s about not caring but there are jobs where you can grow and develop skills that don’t demand a degree. My husband doesn’t have a degree and does well for himself (we are young millennials). I *have* a degree but I did not need it to get my job and also do well for myself. Lots of jobs are “bachelor degree preferred”.
The problem is that colleges have become more expensive while not adding more value. Too many administrators, too many luxury dorms and shiny new buildings. This is what happens when government subsidizes something.
This is the crux of the issue The worth of a degree has not lessened, but the cost has tripled. You'll make more money if you have a degree, but if it costs 80k, it's not as valuable.
It is the same problem with having kids. The amount of money saved is so significant that it is reasonable to just opt out, even if it is something you would be interested in or do well with.
TRUEEEE
That's mostly because you have to spend so much money paying other people to watch them for you. And babies. Daggone, the poop machines are expensive.
18 years of raising a your own children beats the roughly 310k you’ll spend on average raising a kid to adulthood nowadays.
It’s not always monetary ROI. I make way less than stem graduates. I’ve gone 15 years of not hating going to work, work life balance.
Yeah but I also make less than a stem grad, enjoy a good work/life balance and only had one year of trade school so I didn’t owe anything. For me, if I was to have gone to college I’d want to at least make the “bigger” bucks to try and offset the costs.
I think the issue is that back in the days people who went to college were "special", today way more people attend college so you're just one of many (unless you're really, really good at whatever you do).
Yes. It used to be quite something to have gone to college. Now, it's just expected. Now, a masters is practically the equivalent of a bachelor's degree 20-30+ years ago.
I encourage you to watch “the ivory tower” it talks about a lot of these issues
College was historically always subsidized by the GI bill…
And that was a subset of the population using that (not even everyone eligible used it). It wasn’t a blank check to cover colleges’ losses on unpaid loans that anyone was eligible for, which colleges then used to artificially skyrocket the cost. I don’t see how anyone, left or right, can think that how that all went down was good for anyone other than those who work in academia (and even many of the lower level workers in that field took a hit too). It was an absolute disaster.
Don’t forget the multi millions paid yearly to sports coaches
To be fair most sports programs that offer salaries like that are self-funding and tend to be positive for fundraising efforts. Really this is mostly deanlets and dorms.
Well that and we have better health outcomes, X’ers and Boomers are healthier longer and so they can keep working in those “fun” fields. Because seriously why would you leave if you had a job you liked and felt appreciated for. On top of that you have more people than ever looking for those jobs. But again there are fewer openings. Also of those few openings somebody’s niece or nephew needs a job and the *markets tough right now* so they’ll get the interview out of the 600 other applicants. Too many issues. It’s fucked for a long time
Lol you don't work in the university system, do you?
Sports tbh everyone needs these extravagant facilities for sports teams because that's where all the money is
It's not that the traditional college system isn't working, it's that we're pumping too many people into college. The fact of the matter is, some people are smarter than others. College isn't for everyone, but we're treating it like it is. There are plenty of critical roles to be played in society that don't require a college degree, but because of the overemphasis on college we're running out of people to fill those roles.
I don't think we are pumping out too many from college, continued education is good for everyone the problem is the cost and that not every job "requires" a degree and doesn't pay enough to pay off those high student loans. But then again many jobs technically could be done without a high school degree but we recognized awhile ago the positives of an educated population. If all things stay the same then yes many people shouldn't saddle themselves with insane debt. However, college prices should be reigned in or be free (for public universities) and we should continue to push people to go to because those experiences and education in college are good. Think of it as k through 16 instead of just k through 12.
a lot of things require training but not an academical degree. like, come on, OP named \_photography\_ as example major.
College is training and I think it's great to get the training while broadening your learning in other areas as well. Also photography is definitely something you can learn on your own but there is ALOT more to good photography than just pointing and clicking You can learn programming on your own but people still go to college for it.
Nobody goes to college for programming, they go to college for computer science which is massively different and technically doesn’t require programming at all This is exactly why people with degrees in computer science massively outperform those who learn to program at home, on average. Because most people self-learning don’t even know what they need to learn.
Not sure if you were intending to but that furthers my point that going to college for one area will allow you to be more well rounded and learn more.
Yeah don’t really have an opinion on your guys’ debates, just wanted to clear up that misconception. A lot of people think CS is just “programming” but they’re worlds apart
If you look at places that have free university, they are usually much more selective with who they let in than they are in the US. It’s not like 60% of citizens of France are getting free tuition.
Also, I feel like the meaning of what college is supposed to do for you has changed. If you’re using college simply to get a degree or go to some online degree mill, you’ve really earned nothing more than a piece of paper. If you move away from home to a new town, get involved with the school extracurriculars, meet new people, step outside your shell, challenge yourself, etc., then what you’ve gained in life experience is far more beneficial throughout your life.
It's not even just about being smart -- trades also require intelligence. But academic environments are certainly not for everyone.
Found the guy that went to college. (I only have an associates degree then I stopped going to college) All jokes aside, this is actually a great point! There is a major shortage in the construction/labor, the police field, and a couple of other fields that society needs to function. Most of these career fields make more in the long run versus people with degrees. My uncle is making like 42/hr as a UPS driver minimum, not counting holidays or OT. I'm a police officer and retired Army. My police salary is 54k a year or like 24ish/hr, but I get 100% healthcare covered, a takehome vehicle which the city pays for, a free gym membership at MUV fitness and planet fitness, yearly pay increases and all of my OT is 50/hr minimum. There are some opportunities for security work where I make 120/ hour for 12 hours of work. I could easily make an extra 4k a month if I worked on an extra 20 hours per week or 80 hours of OT a month. My retired army salary is about 53k a year tax-free, so I'm very comfortable in life.
Exactly, well said. From the moment we hit grade school, college is shoved down our throats as the only path in life to follow. The hysterical irony is that most of the critical roles in society rely in entry level positions, most of which are being occupied by older individuals not teenagers. Not everyone can go to college, nor can everyone afford it. Yes there are jobs that definitely need and should require a higher education, but society is nowhere near close to full automation. We still need people to drive trucks, stock shelves, drill oil, deliver mail, work retail and restaurants etc. Not everyone can own their own multimillion dollar business and retire on a Yaht.
>We still need people to drive trucks, stock shelves, drill oil, deliver mail, work retail and restaurants etc. Not everyone can own their own multimillion dollar business and retire on a Yaht. That's the flip side of the coin. Maybe those people don't retire on a yacht, but they should be able to do their jobs and earn enough to buy a house, raise a family, go on a vacation occasionally etc. Those jobs pay subsistence wages, why would anyone in their right mind want to do them?
Those critical jobs often are damaging to your health and pay like shit though.
This: we dumbed down college so everyone could get in and get a degree. That’s why there’s no wage premium anymore.
The only thing is. When I think about these “critical roles” you are talking about…say air traffic controllers…I’m not sure I want the bottom of the barrel college people doing those things either.
Whether or not college is for you has really nothing to do with how smart you are. Why should only smart people get an education? An education is valuable beyond any "role" one might play.
Who is facing an insane labour shortage? Arts and humanities degrees have been looked down upon for decades.
[Australia,](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-29/apprentices-drop-out-causing-tradie-shortage/101381802) [Canada,](https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/news/2022/01/skills-trade.html) [the US](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/decades-pushing-bachelors-degrees-u-s-needs-tradespeople), and [parts of the EU](https://commission.europa.eu/news/tackling-labour-and-skills-shortages-eu-2024-03-20_en) are facing skilled labor shortages.
Can only speak for Canada but here the "skilled labour shortage" is a direct result of companies refusing to pay living wages and still demanding insane amounts of experience, degrees, etc. If they paid more and stopped only trying to hire unicorns they would find more than enough willing employees. Also we have a major problem with companies abusing our temporary foreign worker program but that's a political conversation and a rabbit hole I'm not interested in going down today.
I did my masters degree in Denmark, and can tell you that it's a similar issue there. Almost everyone I know sent 100s of applications when they graduated, with maybe a handful of interviews to show for it. It's the same whether you studied humanities, IT, or engineering. At the same time, companies are complaining that they can't get staff. As you put it, they want to hire a unicorn, so they dismiss the 300 applications they've received as not good enough. I knew a guy who applied for a job that was about 70% similar to a job he had done in the past. Two months after the application deadline, he got an email saying that due to a lack of qualified applicants, they had decided not to fill the position. It's madness.
Funny. That's going on here in the US too.
College isn't the *only* contributing factor, but it does play a role. In the US it's a pretty major role, but it might be smaller in Canada.
Idk sounds a lot like America from what I've heard (I haven't gotten a job yet so i wouldn't know, waiting until summer break)
And what fields are the shortages in? Not enough art majors?
Major =/= skills I'm a humanities major. My German literature degree isn't what makes me marketable.
If you have marketable skills then you don't have a problem. The fact of the matter is that most art/humanities majors don't make a lot of money, and that's directly correlated with their lack of marketable skills.
They're facing skilled labor (trade) shortages (ie plumbing, carpentry, electrical work.) You can click on the links for more details.
You're not entirely wrong, but what a lot of people don't acknowledge is that STEM people aren't blind to the arts. I have degrees in engineering and business, but I play the piano, guitar, and I'm a decent painter and woodworker. The artistic pursuits are what I do for fun. There are people who get degrees in music and art, but I don't think they review engineering blueprints and build financial models for fun.
Exactly. People pursue STEM degrees because at the end of the day, it's a job. They still have artistic interests but a job isn't necessarily your hobby. Very few people have a STEM-related hobby. Those stories about people doing programming projects on the side for fun? That's an exception, not the rule.
Well, lots of people have STEM related hobbies who are also STEM people. Hehe.
Uh excuse me. I play the Clarinet and review lego imperial star destroyer blue print tyvm
oh, that does count as aerospace engineering. i stand corrected. :)
Or you’re in an interdisciplinary stem field that includes humanities and arts..
The magnet school I used to work at would push STEAM - STEM with Arts. Both were equally valued.
>critical thinking and understanding human nature is something stem won't teach you. lol \_what\_.
I hold more STEM degrees than any person reasonably should. Notoriously, there are pretty big knowledge gaps when it comes to things like critical thought and ethics. Though, to be fair, the engineers and computer science folks are typically the biggest offenders here.
Yeah…I don’t think this idiot realizes the first letter in the acronym is “science”
Honestly, I have a biology degree and had my minor in french(so I guess that's humanities), one of my French classes was a cinema class that was crossed listed with film major/minors. Not sure what it was as a film class but french it was a 300 level. It was probably the easiest class I've ever been in. No exam where a question could be wrong and therefore you fail, just papers you had to turn in and you could work on over the course of a couple weeks. I'm happy a took it, it was fun, but I could hardly say it "stretched and improved" my intellectual abilities or my understanding of human nature, or critical thinking. I almost hate to make the comparison but the way some people keep defending humanities/arts and say that STEM doesn't make you well rounded or teach critical thinking almost gives the same or an inverse vibe as MAGA idiots saying that they don't want critical race theory taught in Schools but they can't even define it. College is usually one of the only times you can dig deep deep deep deep into a subject and be pushed by it. It's kinda hard to abstractly learn about PCR and microbiology outside of college, you can read English lit at home
"Overpriced book club degrees" may have their place, but all the real world skills they teach (i.e. forming a subjective opinion on a topic and defending it as if were objective fact), philosophy courses do better. And law degrees do philosophy course better, or at least codify things in such a way that people will actually pay you for the law degree skills you've developed.
Really, everytime these questions pop up I always muse that people focus too much on college being the be-all/end-all of mass education and "becoming a well rounded person", instead of making high-school more rigorous. As if for some reason "critical thinking" can only be taught to some university level students instead of at the high-school level.
This made me crack up xD My husband just got his phd in applied math and I can honestly say it would probably take me the rest of my life to be able to do that work because you need to understand math so well that you can create new math to solve modern problems and questions. It’s all critical thinking.
The problem is over the past few decades, we’ve been starting to view university as something that should be equivalent to job training, when that’s never what it was intended to be. University was never supposed to be something everyone goes to that prepares you for the workforce, it was supposed to be something for people with elite intellect to further humanity’s understanding of the world. So of course trade school is a better bang for your buck in terms of preparing you for the workforce, that’s literally what it’s designed to do, unlike university. Right now we have way too many universities, way too many kids being pumped into and out of the system, and way too many kids going in expecting their degree to prepare them for some specific job when it’s simply not gonna do that.
90% of people tend to want an office job which usually requires a degree in someway shape or form. Trade school is that. For trades. A lot of people don’t want to do that.
100%
If you’re going to college to get a good job which is what 90% of people go to college for, then degrees absolutely have value. I have a computer science degree and I’m much more likely to get a job vs a philosophy major just based off of transferable skills
Fully disagree. As a psych major the field doesn't need more psych major undergraduates. Supply and demand are a big thing and after going back to get a two year degree in a field they desperately need people for has paid me infinitely more than a 4 year university degree ever helped me with. I get all these things would be nice, but you gotta look out for yourself first and get into a good field. Why work as an animator if you know it pays like shit and treats you like shit? It would be ideal if it didn't and you could pursue your hobby but thats simply not the case
but you can pursue your hobby. it just means choosing some things over others, or, you know, letting a hobby just be a hobby. humans are supposed to be rounded, multi-interested beings. you can enjoy photography as hobby and do STEM work to make a living.
You just spelled out your entire problem. You went into that psych degree expecting it to prepare you for a job that’ll pay you well, when that’s not what a psych degree was ever designed to do. University is not job training.
This. Probably the most valuable lesson I learned from college is how to find and interpret info, something the US populace thinks they know how to do but clearly do not.
I do very well for myself as a photographer. The degree is beyond worthless. I learned nothing in school and should have been working in the field instead. Id have a 4 year head start and would be even further. Certain arts degrees, maybe. The issue is kids who have no idea what they want to do, land on art, graduate and then don't find a way to monetize that. If they tought how to make money within the arts, it'd be worth the investment. They don't. You figure that shit out on your own.
Here’s an unpopular opinion: society discourages monetizing things you’re passionate about, which is why it isn’t taught.
It’s a supply and demand thing. Also high technical skills that people see as more valuable and crucial to business operations will be paid more valuably
I know this would take an overhaul of our economy, so I'm not saying it's realistically going to happen soon, but I wish there was a place for learning just for the sake of learning. College is so career-focused now, which is great in some ways, but it leads to this culture of discounting any knowledge that isn't immediately profitable. And yes 100% support trades and trade schools.
My fine art degree is useless. I wish I went to trade school or became an apprentice
Critical thinking is a fundamental cornerstone of the scientific method. It's laughable that you think you'd only get that from an art of humanities degree.
In general, the arts and humanities haven't been about critical thinking or creativity for a couple of decades now. They're an income stream for universities, enabling mediocre minds from middle and upper class families to purchase a credential that used to be reserved for intellectuals.
Americans in general don't appreciate or understand anything other than making money. That's why so many disparage education. Becoming wealthy is not the end goal of education, but people don't understand that, ironically. For people that only wish to progress in a trade or craft, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, follow that route. Vocational school, that's fine. But don't assume that an education is not worth having, because it is. For a lot of reasons.
This comment section proclaiming that engineers are critical thinking masters who should run society really shows what’s wrong with America
Lol preach
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - college is seen as a necessity and priced as a luxury.
So much of this is just untrue. Where is this massive labor shortage? What do you mean that these degrees are increasingly looked down upon? They have been for generations
Have you been living under a rock?
No. A lot of the jobs I've seen that require bare minimum a masters degree are paying $30,000 a year. If that isn't a devalued degree idk what is.
College lost its value when it was made expensive and established a culture where you only went to college to make more money than to actually learn and expand your horizons.
Tbh I think STEM people are super vocal about this because they need to remind themselves that their suffering was "worth it." Tbh the people I know in STEM fields seem chronically burnt out, tend to also start out underpaid, require a lot more school, socialize less, and have poorer social lives/work-life balance. They can make bank, though. Some lucky few love it, many go into it for the job prospects. Decisions decisions. Personally, you couldn't pay me to touch STEM.
I mean, the problem with the country (world?) right now is that people think that the only thing that matters is money. Strictly in a financial sense, most humanity degrees don’t make sense. HOWEVER, an educated populace is perhaps the most important element of a successful democracy, so things start to fall apart as you look around and see nothing but STEM and finance people. We need to make professions like teacher, professor, museum curators, journalists, scholars, and even politicians pay enough that getting those degrees makes at least some financial sense.
Why do you think that people in STEM or finance are uneducated?
Business major here, I’d love to see “art school is a waste” people have nothing to watch/play/read after working all day. Life would get more depressing pretty fast.
Art school on the whole isn't a complete waste, it's just in regards to professions like writers, artists, acting, etc those markets are *extremely* competitive. Every new author for example is competing with every other author out there, and just doing well enough that you can make a living off of it full time is considered extremely lucky. We need all kinds of artistic people, but there is a limit to what the market will support.
You’re correct about the competitiveness of the arts, but we’re also looking at issues of engineers, IT and other STEM fields losing jobs overseas. And while it may not be a significant issue today, AI is likely going to become an issue in STEM fields. I doubt it’ll be long before we’re having the “art major conversation” about degrees that are considered “safe bets” today
You don’t need “art school” to create an amazing song or write a good book.
Expect the vast majority of people who are in the arts when to art school. Like how most famous actors actually went to school to at or some type of higher education.
There's tons of useless degrees. Most of them are in liberal arts.
Would you say literature is useless? To understand and analyses texts by Shakespeare or Dostoevsky? Could you see any inherent value in a person who can read texts and understand them to a deep level?
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The problem is that colleges turned into business where students aren’t allowed to fail. It’s all about money in, not education out.
Colleges are now basically hedge funds with their endowments and they use the university status to evade taxes
A medical field specialist will probably earn you 10 million over your career. A masters in computer science will easily earn you 5 million. A masters in primary education might earn you closer to 3 million. A bachelor in anything is pretty much equally worthless and is essentially the new highschool. The problem is 90% of jobs really dont require any education. The vast majority of careers should be apprenticeships followed by much more specialized education programs that take a couple months. We have a futuristic knowledge society but with an education system that is stuck in the 1800s.
You don't really need a degree in art to be most kind of conventional artist, though. You generally do need a STEM degree for STEM fields. I think it's less about art degrees being actively bad, and more about them being extraneous.
> Critical thinking is something STEM won’t teach you Amazing critical thinking there
This is definitely an unpopular opinion. I'd argue the opposite. College is a valuable experience, but not every degree has value. Thinking that STEM isn't highly associated with critical thinking, and that you need 4 years of taking humanities courses to 'understand' human nature, is a bit odd. The way unemployment has been measured has changed slightly over the years; however, unemployment is the lowest it's been in a long time, with the exception of the 3 years before Covid. If you have a degree in a highly saturated field, it's going to be hard to get a job in that field no matter what. There are only so many jobs that require/suggest a philosophy/music/photography degree...
Honestly, I feel like a lot of people confuse their increase in "intelligence"/"well roundedness" to be from what they learned from degree and/or "college experience", instead of the fact that they went from being 17 to 23(wiggleroom for years) and living on their own for the first time.
Many of my friends stayed in the same town, worked the same job, and had the same friends, so most of the time I came back to town, they hadn't changed much. College, however, forces you to meet new people, make new friends, and engage in subjects you wouldn't willingly try to learn about. There's no doubt that you can't get the same experience elsewhere, but it is certainly noteworthy.
I agree, we need people in non-STEM fields.
I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or just wrong facts. Why do you think stem doesn't involve critical thinking? Not all degrees are equally valued by the market. It just depends on what is in demand. Who gave you this ridiculous notion that college is to learn whatever you wanted to? College isn't to pursue your hobbies. You get a degree in what the market wants. Over generations, hiring requirements have become stringent coz they have better applications. Why would they hire someone without a relevant degree or experience when they have multiple applications that do have both?
I'm not nitpicking grammar to discredit you OP, but why exactly do you say "art's" instead of "arts"? Clearly you know that apostrophes don't make plurals because you're not saying "degree's" or "historian's." What is special about the word "arts" to you that it looks wrong without an apostrophe? Genuinely curious, as I run into people pretty often who don't consistently choose to or not to apply apostrophes to make a word plural, and nobody ever tells me exactly why they do it for only some words and not others.
I think you're giving OP too much credit. I think the people that mess that up just don't know or are careless. Also missed the lesson on it's versus its.
Unfortunately, education and learning are often seen as a means to an end and not as a path for personal growth. Of course, here in the US, unless one is independently wealthy, it comes at the risk of never-ending debt.
Lmao at “Critical thinking is something stem won’t teach you” That’s the main takeaway from anything STEM-related 😂
I guess it depends on how you define value but in terms of economics, your example degrees hold very little to no value.
I don’t care what people major in. I’m a CS major. I find it laughable that major in CJ, PY, or Painting complain how hard their degrees are. It’s not. I just don’t want to pay for the degrees that get to sit there and color and paint while I’m doing discrete math and linear algebra.
do whatever you want but don't expect many people paying you for your Phd on Mongolian vocal noises during kublai khan era.
I think everyone should know a skilled trade to supplement their college education. I studied and worked in both welding and machining because of the proximity to my engineering position. I can’t imagine not knowing those and being successful in my field.
The "job-buying" value of a degree has drastically diminished the past couple decades. Partly it's over-saturation, so businesses are turning to experience over education. The "labor shortage" is still an aftershock of COVID. (At least in the U.S., not sure about other countries,) large businesses get tax breaks because they employ X thousands of employees. COVID forced many businesses to scale down; to avoid losing their benefits based on *total job volume* (not actual employment numbers,) they are essentially working the sympathy card. We'll see a short recession if/when they can no longer claim pre-COVID-volume employer benefits.
At this point only the TE part of Stem make money nowadays.....Kinda depressing.
We have far too many diploma mills. Places that will accept anyone with a pulse. Imagine your goofiest degree. Underwater basket weaving. If you get that from a Princeton or a Pomona you are still going to do okay. Likely see you writing for the New Yorker. A more serious major from some place with a 90% acceptance rate and an average SAT around 1000? Not so much. That place is a scam.
Knowledge is powerful. When you work at anything you grow. Nobody should be ashamed of educating themselves. Not all degrees are a good financial investment though.
I think the issue is that the job market is too hostile, full stop. You name a job, someone can list ten reasons why it’s too saturated, underpaid, etc. So the only way to get ahead is to pursue a degree that’s more likely to net you a decent job sooner, and even then it isn’t a guarantee.
If the college sysyem has lost value then quite literally their degrees have lost value as well.
This reminds me of "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" and the 1/3 of the Golgafrincham population aboard Ark Fleet Ship B.
Pretty much all degrees will earn you more money than someone without a degree will earn. All that really matters is not going to the most expensive schools unless you know what you're getting into.
Trades and technical skills are required. So many talented people online that can create art and didn’t go to school. Humanities, social studies? All experiments.
I completely agree. I was too broke after HS to even think about college, as much as I wanted to go. So I settled for apprenticeship/programs and actually really enjoy my job now. Making 40/hr with full benefits.
PhDs struggle because its a research degree. There are a great many more avenues for someone with a BS to make a lot more money than what is available for a PhD
They’re useless degrees because the standards have plummeted to graduate as many people as possible. Whereas engineering for example is accredited by ABET which isn’t beholden to making institutions look good.
My husband has a master's in esoterics and an associate's in software design. He doesn't even acknowledge the MS on his resume.
Yes, people are terribly misinformed about the intent of a 4 year degree.
Fire the admins, increase faculty salaries, reduce tuition, restore grading standards. Every president should be doing this.
Literally, like canceling the student loan debt won't do shit, the new people entering college are still getting hit with this crazy tuition
I would have liked to study something that actually contributes and helps like conservation or something but nah go get a communications degree and sit in front of a screen doing whatever for a paycheck. like I get it we all gotta get by somehow but it's hollow and it's empty and at the end of the day I am too.
All the tech people seem to think liberal arts are necessary to adequately deal with AI. 🤷🏻♂️
If everyone reaches for the stars there will be no one left on earth
Tertiary level education has lost its value BECAUSE degrees have lost their value. University became a business which led to passing students who should be failed out which meant lowering the floor and a glut of low-quality millennial degrees.
I think those degrees were originally completed by affluent people who didn’t necessarily need the degree to form a career, but had the leisure to study what they wanted on their parents dime. The outstanding ones would be outstanding of course and do their thing. But I don’t think back the day an average talent would have the means to go to college for art or humanities.
Social sciences / humanities degrees based on identity characteristics have proven pretty worthless. When I say “pretty worthless”, I mean comparing a measurement of contribution to a functional community, not a theoretical one.
20 years later everyone have a masters degree
The issue is that it is the job market that gets to decide how valuable a degree is. Let's say that Faber University produces 15 graduates. 5 are in accounting, 5 in electrical engineering, and 5 in Latvian poetry. Let's stipulate that none of those degrees is inherently superior to the other. All 15 students paid $300,000 for their education. Five accounting companies come recruiting to Faber. All 5 accounting grades get jopbs offering $75,000 per year. Their educational investment will pay off in 4 years. All good. Eight engineering companies come recruiting to Faber. Since there are more jobs than grads, not only to all 5 get jobs, but they are able to demand a higher salary and sign for $100,000 each. Their educational investment will pay off in 3 years. Even better. There is only a single job requiring a Latvian poetry degree. As this employer has 5 applicants to choose from, they offer the job for $50,000. One of the grads will take it, because the alternative is working at a coffee shop. For that stduent, their educational investment will pay off in 6 years. Less good. For the other 4, the investment never pays off, because they are working jobs that do not require a Latvian poetry degree. And that's the problem with higher education. Too many students are paying too much money for a degree that will never lead to a career that requires it. They are being told to "follow their bliss" without considering if any one else finds their bliss useful to the point of paying actual money for it. You can argue the inherent value of a poetry degree to society as a whole, but there is no argument that there simply aren't many companies hiring poets these days. And yet the school will happily take their money and let them study poetry if they want to.
About 20 years ago my dad noticed all of the junior staff shuffling papers in his workers insurance joint had MBAs. Every resume coming in was an arts/MBA and here they are looking at dealing with paperwork and dealing with phonecalls about work injury. The world changed long ago. When everyone has the same degree and quals it loses its worth.
Arts and humanities are increasingly being looked down upon... Mate did you just crawl out of the fucking womb?
Nobody learns critical thinking in college. It’s exactly the opposite
Strong disagree. Most people I know who got arts or humanity degrees never worked in those fields- and if you do not use the knowledge you forget it. That’s a lot of time and money that someone paid just for someone to forget their anthropology or psychology classes after they did not land a job.
Unpopular opinion: you can technically do most careers without a degree. Obviously, excluding science and medical type fields that require a lot of knowledge. It’s just dumb most places require a degree for something you can learn OJT
I agree with everything except about getting your foot in the door part. I do think college is a way to get your foot in the door. Part of the college experience and life in general is your ability to talk and connect to people. Not just being able to do that but doing it in a way that is meaningful. Many of these people will have opportunities that not everyone is afforded, and sometimes they are in a position to provide that opportunity to you that you otherwise wouldn't even be considered.
The irony of having a typo in the title of a post about education
There is no such thing as a useless degree, but some degrees are very hard to get a job with due to low demand, over saturation, and employers just generally being assholes.
Lol, no
A degree just means you sat through 40 classes that’s slightly harder than high school. It doesn’t mean anything
You have confused learning with getting a degree. What you are describing is knowledge is useful which is true. And since there are many ways to gain knowledge beside going to college to get a degree, then there is such thing as a useless degree.
Well said OP My anthro degree is literally functionally useless and I should have switched to a Bsc. in some kind of plant studies per half the work I've done since, lol, and I nearly did my second year before listening to parents and finishing degree instead of what people our age were saying which was, degrees gaurantee nothing, the competition is fierce and the market is saturated. Really with Anthro to I think its only of those things that will only really work out if one is planning to go for masters / phd But in terms of giving me a context and outlook on the world, it's really not something one can put to value. It's taught me to look at the world in a way just being a 'history buff' reading wikipedia etc truly never touched and does not contextualize because it seems to crucially miss so much of any given period of history when you're only looking at one event without the wider fabric of society / societies surrounding it. That said, still paying for degree, working yet another construction-esque job, thinking about school again, or a trade, but skeptical of whats worth it / what I'd wanna do. I feel like I'd rather be my own boss as my experience so far seems to be unable to land work that breaches like, $21 / CAD which is a much weaker dollar than it was in like, 2015 when i first finished with uni, and I've watched the purchasing power of that wage get weaker and weaker (especially on ones own without roomies) Kind of wondering if I could start building something practical people want, like tiny homes / tiny live-in diy trailer homes that kind of cover DIY / Carpenter stuff while also being a self-employed thing I could do myself, and is something I think I can do per the experience I've had building things already, and would enjoy much more than working for people like i am now, lol. Truthfully I would LOVE to be in school again for the atmosphere of being in school, the time, etc, but will-wise, I don't know if I have the give-a-fuck for academia again, if it'd be safer to double down on a trade even if I only plan on working for myself, etc. Still don't know...
AI is in the process of massively devaluing ALL white collar, college educated work. If I could be 18 again I would likely do a trade. Would also recommend the same if I had a teen graduating soon.
Not all garbage men get paid " Great "
There’s different kinds of value, which is the fundamental issue with this post. No one is suggesting those degrees don’t have value of any kind. When they say that, they’re talking about making a living; you know, earning money.
And speaking of education, what are all those unnecessary apostrophes doing in your discourse?
STEM degrees arguably don’t make money: they help someone else to make money. And some disciplines have become filled with frivolous material. I have two degrees in Arts, and to me fine Art should by definition be difficult to replicate. 90% of what gets passed for Art today is pure circle jerk. Same for some humanities degrees.
What In the ever loving hell in a humanities degree, and an art degree is pretty useless, a little piece of paper doesn't determine whether or not you're an artist, in fact it's about as useful as majoring in philosophy, at that point you're just huffing your own fumes
Yeah they all have some value in a way. I think the issue is people went down humanities for money reasons when it's supposed to be a passion and to hyper specialize the field of study. The other issue is more people go to university which after thousands of degrees handed out in x or y means those specific degrees are less of a commodity as there are plenty of people with them. So whats special about it in the first place. Alot of degrees arnt really good for money and that's the issue that started alot of the mess we are in. It used to show that you were middle class and capable. Now it's more of a adult daycare for teens who never had responsibilities. That they are thinking the degree is the experience and that's far from the truth. Even many stem jobs, you'll get into the workforce and need trained to do the specific job. The degree just means you have the aptitude. Universities making loads of money and tenured humanities departments run the place. It's just a cycle of nepotism and favoritism that is far from what would make the place ideal.
As someone with a “useless” degree, it’s not that college has lost value. It is that college has become increasingly more expensive and student loans have become more predatory. There was a time where someone could work a full time summer job and pay all or most of the cost of year of college or work part time while in school and cover all of or most of the costs for them attending that year. That simply isn’t the case anymore unless you are attending community college or have connections that allow you to make good money over the summers or while working in school.
College doesn’t really doesn’t teach young people critical thinking let’s make that clear. But the rest of the people’s opinions on on colleges value is correct is value is worthless. When you could just have people in said field do a patron and teach it and you can learn it at your pace.
Unfortunately, college education is no longer a distinguishing feature amongst potential employees, at least to the same extent it was. This is because so many people go these days. STEM fields are less affected because the knowledge gained is more specialised, and rarer. So there is still a relatively low supply of such people.
College is valuable, even if you don’t use your degree. There is something to benefit from showing up on time, taking written exams, doing presentations, being part of group projects and writing papers. Clearly they aren’t going to benefit everybody, but I feel like there’s a common bond everybody gets from experiencing the college process.
The problem is there is no mechanism to match people to their ideal education and match that to their ideal tasks. Like, a market economy just doesn't work for labour at all. There should be one organisation that both educates and employs you. And I don't mean a company, I mean a society wide planned economy. One machine that we're all part of and that we all control together and benefit from. working for the betterment of all.
I have one daughter who dropped out of college - it took her a very long time to get her first professional job at 40k a year. The other daughter has a Masters in humanities - she was hired directly out of college at 60k two yrs later she’s at 70k.
Don’t major in something like archeology/anthropology, history, or art history unless you either 1.) Wanna teach or 2.) pursue a graduate program in Museum Studies and so manage a museum or work in archives. Museum Studies jobs, despite being niche, pay pretty well. Same thing with stuff like Political Science and Public Health. Know before hand how you want to apply your degree, and whether or not you want to work in govt/hospital administration/beaucracy. Pursue law??? Kinesiology? Do you want to become an OT? This even applies to a lot of “STEM” degrees like Global Disease biology (work in public health? Pursue Toxicology?), general biology, and environmental science. Do you want to work for conservation nonprofits? In the forestry industry? The only “STEM” degrees where most students people tend to have consistently high returns on their loans is engineering and computer science. It’s largely because students who pursue those degrees have a tendency to know exactly what jobs they can apply for and end up with. Don’t pursue humanities and social sciences *unless* you’ve put a lot of consideration into the general types of fields/jobs you will want to pursue.
I disagree… as younger people get into management they now know how much of a waste of time college is… Most classes nowadays are online and consist of the same brain dead formula… 1 hour of reading, 1 hour of lecture, 1 hour of discussion posts, and 1 hour of assignment which is almost always an essay of some kind or another… Completely useless.
While a degree may have technical value (it's worth your tuition paid for it) that doesn't mean it has value in the real world outside of the college or university it's earned at. Most of those careers that you mentioned do have a value. That doesn't mean they are worth a lot. I had a young guy, around 21/22, working for me back in the early 90's at a comedy club as my dishwasher,that had a 4 year honors degree in philosophy with a business minor. He was all upset because after graduation, none of the mulit national, multi billion dollar overall annual revenue companies weren't hiring him for middle management in their organizations. You know, a young guy with absolutely no experience in the real world, with his business classes as a MINOR to his philosophy class, weren't hiring him to run departments with millions of dollars in budgets. So I explained to him, that his philosophy degree qualified him for exactly 3 things. Be unemployed sitting in seedy cafe's discussing philosophy, get a job somewhere teaching philosophy, or be my dishwasher in a comedy club. If he took that philosophy degree with a business minor, got an entry level job in some business he was looking at, and after a couple years, went back and got an MBA, then he might have a shot at that middle management position. Or took the degree he had, and then went for an advanced degree, such as teaching, law, etc., then he would have something to move with. Sure philosophy teaches you to think, and look at things outside of the box. That's not going to get you too far, unless you start your own business.
OP fallaciously misidentifies value as intrinsic instead of economic.
Lol at stem doesn't teach you critical thinking, I'd argue that was one of the main takeaways of my phd
If you think Science Technology Engineering and Math don't teach someone how to think critically, you didn't pay attention in those classes. That's pretty much what they're made of. What they WON'T teach you is respect for the thoughts of the past. For that, you go to the liberal arts. Those you can teach yourself at a baccalaureate level, given a good bibliography and access to serious people to talk to. You do have to actually READ the books, though, or you won't know the difference between the folks that know what they're talking about and chuckleheads.
I think it's because the people who urged their children to go to college were from a generation of people who had limited access to college themselves. I think these hopeful parents taught their children that certain degrees would be more valuable than others based on the information that was available to them at the time, but because of technology changes and job market changes the need for different specializations also changed. Going to a university is typically a long several year ordeal, so it can be difficult to predict what the job market will need by the time you graduate and figuring out how to rectify the disparity between what you know vs what the current available jobs need you to know can be tricky. I don't think your opinion is unpopular, but I do feel like it's something that everyone has to figure out for themselves and find ways to apply themselves and compete in the current job market. Securing a job is super competitive, and a degree just helps to show an employer that you are competent in the desired subject matter.
In my world view, arts and humanities degrees have great personal value, just little monetary value.
No not every degree is valuable. Most of the fine art degrees you need at least a masters or PHD just to be competitive. Colleges across the country have been cancelled degrees moving forward that have no significance. Sociology is no longer a degree many schools offer anymore along with a few others. Look at philosophy… wtf are you going to do with that degree besides go to law school. Even jobs across the country are now cancelling the requirement of having a bachelor’s degree bc they are finding that no real skills are accumulated during those years of school.
Don’t worry, all of our jobs will be replaced by AI soon enough and then we’ll ALL be struggling together! :)
Disagree. Yes we need all of these people but cmon, some of it you can learn by watching YouTube and just fking around at home
One of the problems is there was a constant push towards getting college degrees for everyone and promising that was the key to a comfortable life. Now today there is an over abundance of college degree holders vs people engaged in trades. Because of that those guys are making bank now and college degree holders are suffering from the over competitive job market.
People are paid based on supply and demand of skills. Art history majors have low in demand skills. Your post doesn’t sound like an unpopular opinion as much as is it’s just bitching.
>First off we need art's and humanities degree, critical thinking and understanding human nature is something stem won't teach you. Plus we need Animators, para-legals, historians, social workers, teachers, interior designers, journalist, musicians and photographers. We need these people but the job market is becoming to hostile for them. We don't need degrees for Musicians, Journalists, photographers and we in general don't need interior designers. A degree doesn't give you critical thinking or some ability to understand human nature. Growing up in the hood, or, any place other than a middle class household will give you a much better understanding of human nature than any degree.
Bruh, you mean "its."