I keep hearing this complete utter nonsense— no college degree is useless. Yes, there are useless degrees.
How can it be acceptable to invest 4 years, and thousands of dollars into something, to arrive where you began?
Unfortunately for most people, food, shelter, vacations, freedom, is tied to that pay check. So, unless you come from wealth, if your degree can’t provide the basic necessities, it’s useless.
Passion shouldn’t translate to a career, your passion can remain a passion. Pursue something useful, something society needs to function, like, nursing, engineering, accounting, med school or apprenticeship like trades. Or you can graduate with a useless degree, regret and complain how college is a scam. College is only a scam if you pick useless degrees.
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Agree.
Free will and all that. People can do as they wish
But I agree
One of the most popular opinions in the world. And of course, i agree.
Completely agree, I’ve seen plenty
Can you list what you consider to be useless?
GE 🤣🤣🤣🤣
So no more movies! Or video games! Or photographs! Or stories, period! Fuck all that noise, right? Totally useless.
Oh…you didn’t mean it that way. You just don’t think the people who MAKE them deserve to be paid! Fair enough, lololol.
Useless in terms of a pipeline straight into a career, sure.
But I do think that all degrees do have value in the skills learned through doing them even if you don’t then use that knowledge.
I have a graphic design degree, I worked as a graphic designer for 5 years but after making no money, being made redundant a lot because design was the first department cut in budget bullshit and just generally finding it unfulfilling, I got out.
I’m not American but a lot of jobs here in the UK just require a degree, not necessarily a specific one. So my degree despite being specialist in nature, still opened doors for me. I got interviews and job offers for jobs outside of my field.
But even that aside, the skills I learned on that degree course are things I use every day, critical thinking, creativity, analysis, the ability to take multiple references and create a new original idea, creative problem solving, fast ideation, conceptual development. I’m a chef now and my graphic design degree and it’s skills have set me apart and made me progress quicker
I def agree that not all college degrees are made equal.
However, I don’t know if I agree with “putting passion aside for usefulness” being the always correct answer.
As someone who ended up falling into depression and even had suicidal thoughts while pursuing CS degree (that I grown to hate), just because he thought it is “useful” and “stable”, I can promise you that doing a degree that you have no passion just for practicality has its own issue.
Eventually I burned out and by the time I reached 4th year I didn’t want to do anymore computer related stuff. It wasn’t for me. I’m not that good in coding or problem solving and I hate the tech industry. And even the “useful” part is meaningless to me with job market being awful. And people expect me to excel and be on top of things to get internships let alone full time jobs.
I wanted to quit everything. But I have yet to finish my degree and I’m so close. So here I am stuck with doing something I hate, knowing there’s no guarantee of the job security that I once aimed for. And I often look at my friends who study music or film that I have passion for… and even if their future seem bleak, they still have drive and motive to grind. But I just don’t wanna lock in anymore, and I know that then there’s no future in what I’m studying if “I” cannot do it. It’s that straightforward tbh.
I know that this is a unique case cause I in particular REALLY HATE what I’m studying, while others, might not find to be their passion but can still tolerate it.
Perhaps it’s the “grass is always greener on the other side” thing, but this is just one person’s different perspective that I hope you can see some merit in!
I don’t believe useless degrees are a thing. As long as you got something out of the degree, it’s not useless. Getting a job offer from that degree isn’t the only useful aspect. Is it the goal? Of course. But educating yourself, learning to be more analytical, and becoming a more well rounded person from having formal education are not useless. There are things you can take from having a degree and utilize them in your every day life or use them to widen your viewpoints/perspectives.
Not to mention, if you are just speaking job wise, do you know how many job listings require a Bachelors degree or some sort of formal education? A LOT. It doesn’t matter what you majored in, they just want proof of a degree. There are some positions that simply won’t consider you if you don’t have a degree. Even if the degree doesn’t have anything to do with the job you are applying for, as long as you have that degree, it’s useful to you.
No degree is pointless. It can open up job opportunities, of course, but an education opens up your mind and is able to make you think differently, which is never useless.
Firstly I’m not sure this is an unpopular opinion, that some degrees have significantly less worth than others is just as well-known fact. I feel like this is more of an excuse for you to just rail against colleges in general unless they are giving the degrees you deem acceptable! So not an unpopular opinion disguised in an angry rant about colleges makes this post just a “BAD OPINION”.
First define useless
They didn’t used to be useless. A lot of gov jobs didn’t care what your degree was in. But seriously. Who wants to be a federal worker now?
I can definitely relate to this. I went to school originally for ‘Media Communications’, boy was I disappointed when I got out. The only people that had any financial success after graduating were the few people that were really good programmers who would have gotten jobs even if they didn’t take the course.
I think you should also mention the useless degrees and how you think they are useless and don’t contribute to the society. Otherwise this post has no sense.
You had me until you started speaking about passion. Learning more about what makes you feel alive is not wasted. With the current system, I get where you are coming from, but you and the system are objectively wrong. It’s not unpopular. It’s simply ass backward.
“How can it be acceptable to invest 4 years, and thousands of dollars into something, to arrive where you began?”
You don’t.
“Passion shouldn’t translate to a career, your passion can remain a passion. Pursue something useful, something society needs to function, like, nursing, engineering, accounting, med school or apprenticeship like trades.”
People can be engineers or accountants because people like philosophers did their goddamn job, otherwise you’d still be a peasant under a king and you’d be picking weeds in someone elses garden instead of making useless posts on reddit.
I think theres very few useless degrees (sorry, I know several unis with a degree in ‘esports’, that IS useless.) the issue is theres a lot of oversubscribed ones
Sociology as a field is pretty helpful, and can inform social policy, even if it isnt a real science. Sociological researchers can definitely contribute a fair bit to society
Ultimately, most roles contribute something, the world wouldnt function if everyone just became a doctor or worked a trade
University is also generally good if the standard of it is good.
Accessible further education leading to a more educated (and potentially globally competitive) workforce/populace is fantastic
I guess useless is not the right word, more like low value or less desirable. Like the job market has no demand or necessity for the specific study or practice from the degree.
All degrees are useless.
I think what gets annoying is when someone like me, an anthropology major, is building a really neat career that society needs to function and people tell me my degree is useless before I even have a chance to talk about it. There are loads of jobs that care more about the experience you got during your degree than your degree title.
I specifically wanted to get into policy because there’s a lot of room to do a lot of different types of work throughout my career, and the work was better suited for me than something like nursing or engineering. It may not seem like I’m “trained” to do anything, but I have taken very hands-on courses where I learned how to do policy analysis. But really, the main thing they care about for policy analyst roles is that you’re a capable researcher. The degree isn’t named after a profession, though, so people just think it’s useless.
I guess the point I’m dancing around is that there’s really no reason to call people’s degrees useless before we understand how they’re planning to use them. It is possible to make use of ANY degree, but we just tell 17-year-olds to either do something that makes money or do something they love without discussing any of the nuances around building your experience and researching what careers apply to different jobs.
I got a degree in TV and film production. After 10 years of working on and off in that toxic industry and not getting very far I shifted into corporate and became a BA.
I didn’t need my degree to get into film, it felt wasted as a qualification and I resented it for a long time. But I learnt lot about myself at University, I moved out, learnt to take care of myself and grew up. Some classes taught me good life lessons, even if not specific to my course.
Admittedly you could gain all the lessons I learnt without spending thousands on tuition fees. But it was the life crash course I needed at the time and I wouldn’t have got it all without going to University.
Some people can work out at the gym alone. Some need a personal trainer. University was my personal trainer for growing up and leaving home.
I really hope this isn’t an unpopular opinion since it’s an inarguable fact. Look I to the history of how higher education has evolved since policies in the 80s/90s focused in increasing the number of graduates (a noble aim) but how they went about achieving it…
Disagree. You learn, make connections, and not become a Trump supporter. It’s exercise for your brain. Food for your brain. It makes you an asset to society, an asset to the dinner table. Can this also be done by reading? Sure, but I stand by what I said, none are useless.
Wow, not sure where to start with this. Unpopular. You nailed it. I cant tell if its ignorance and inexperience or simply narrow-mindedness. And self-oriented, 100%. You see the world as pure transaction. That the degree must have clear financial and personal ROI.
Yes, degrees are obviously a milestone and achievement. Some degrees have direct or practical application to specific careers or further advanced degrees. But there are many and probably even more careers that arent degree specific.
University educations are meant to develop well-round individuals, critical thinkers, ethical reasoning, etc. You can see in admission trends medical schools and management programs are increasingly accepting liberal arts and other non-quantative or non-science degrees because of this more balance candidate.
As a hiring manager, for many roles, I can train the hard skills. But it is near impossible to train curiosity, critical and holistic thinking, drive, humility/citizenship in the world. These are skills and attributes that you develop through a broad education and arent degree specific.
Some degrees are a waste of money in University.
For getting a career sure. But society needs them all, no matter what your opinions on it are. Society can’t function off of STEM and Economics.
I have a Master’s degree in Philosophy.
I’m now working as a Senior Data Analyst, making around $125k.
I wouldn’t have landed the job without the degree, it was a requirement just to take the tests.
On top of that, the recruitment board specifically mentioned that having such an unexpected background was seen as a valuable asset.
So maybe it’s not the “best” Master’s degree in everyone’s eyes, but it definitely wasn’t useless.
Colleges exist first to provide education, second (and not necessarily) to train for a profession. Not everyone is a slave to capitalism who bases their entire life on career and money. There’s no such thing as useless knowledge. If you’re interested in a particular field and want to gain knowledge in it, that’s a completely valid reason to pursue higher education. Let people decide what they do with their time and money.
I a gree about some degrees. There are degrees that you basically dont need to have to succeed in what you want to do.
Everything that is artsy, for example acting, painting, sculpting and stuff like that, degrees in those fields are useless.
But some of the others i saw you named i think are important. Psychology for example. I think no one would want to be treated by someone who just “likes” the subject, you would want someone that actually know what they are doing and a degree shows that they actually studied that subject and likely know what and how to help.
If for example i go to therapy i would go to therapists who have a degree.
Overall i agree, there are a lot of useless degrees
This only proves that Capitalism is a broken system.
Useless degrees do exist “Media Studies” being one of the largest offenders. I also remember a couple of Universities offering degrees on David Beckham some fair few years back.
Sometimes, a job just wants a degree as a requirement for a job. Also, many civil jobs require a four year degree. The degree provided some value,maybe not enough.
I think too many jobs require a degree, on the job experience could work. A reason to have a four degree, not having one, might eliminate you from a lot of jobs.
no they arent useless. they still exist.
Anything with “studies” in the degree title.
Useless for what? It depends on what the goal is.
If you are judging the value of a degree on its ability to get you a job then yes there are degrees that are more or less useless.
But colleges are not solely intended to be only for employment training.
They are just meant to be places of learning, a lot of the time the learning will lead someone into a career, but people can choose to learn at a college for other reasons than trying to get a paycheck/job.
Some people have the goal of studying for the sake of learning/experimenting itself, or because it’s a subject they are passionate in or find fun or for self growth/general skill development etc.
That means any degree can be useful for that goal if it suits the person studying it.
Allowing people to pursue things for their own sake, and not just because it has an immediate financial payoff, enables research and learning that adds to peoples lives society in deep and unexpected ways. If we only supported people doing things that directly lead to making money the world would be a boring corporate hellhole.
Also half the scientfici discoveries and cultural things that we use today were stumbled across by people who were working on a random seemingly pointless passion project of theirs and accidently discovered something important. Without enabling that creativity and freedom to learn/experiment then those events wouldn’t happen.
Boring utilitarian shite.
Degrees shouldn’t be to get a job – it’s about research and knowledge, not career prospects.
The fact it helps career is a bonus, not a requirement
I somewhat agree with this. There are degrees where the actual degree itself is useless and the world could go without. That said, the actual experience of going through university is useful in itself
If the only purpose in your life is to build a career and make lots of money, sure. Some people don’t want to do that, and would rather get creative or less common degrees because that’s what they’re passionate about.
This also takes the focus away from the point of a degree, which is to learn. Not so much anymore sadly, as degrees are just papers to get jobs, but there used to be value in learning.
I’m so tired of the idea that you should just get a useful degree and get a good job. Boring. I don’t want to spend years of my life doing something i’m not passionate about.
Can confirm. Got a political science degree for undergrad. I think schools should be held criminally responsible for even offering such nonsense. First job I got paid 15 bucks an hour, which I could have made right out of high school.
Higher culture separates humans from mere animals. Calling these degrees useless is not unpopular, but stupid.
After seeing your comments OP I see what happening. You are under the impression that college gains you nothing if you don’t utilize your degree. Unfortunately that’s incorrect. What it gains you is a college education, thus opening a whole new world of job opportunities for you. Yes some will be in the field you studied, but you also have access to the ones that fall outside of that. Having a degree increases one’s income potential significantly. That’s why no degree is useless, as to obtain it is to be able to say “I completed college”. Which in the workforce puts you pretty high above those that haven’t. Seems strange, I know, but it what it is.
It doesn’t matter. if you do something that makes you happy, even it’s studying something other people would consider completely useless, you will find a way to make money out of it. And a career, and happiness, and money.
Studying something you hate because it’s an useful smart decision, will get you depressed and unhappy.
I’ve studied something so called useless, was very happy and passionate about it, and continued a career in that field, and i’m really happy about it. I just told myself to keep doing what makes me happy. And I earn good money, and I’m not a person dreading Monday morning to go to work like so many other people do. It seems awful to me so spend so much of your time alive hating your job.
So those thousands of dollars are an investment in your happiness. Just keep doing what you like, and pursue it with passion and eagerness and put all your best in it. And it will become a career.
you called it “Useless degrees”, because you mean the degrees that isn’t guarantee a jobs and money. but university shares the knowledge, not high paying job. it’s not useless, just there isn’t job market for it. Even astronomy was once considered impractical knowledge and no one pay for it.
My first degree was a bit useless because I didn’t want, by the time I had the BA Psychology, to go on and do a clinical doctorate or anything similar. But I wouldn’t have got the job I did get without any degree at all, and without it I wouldn’t have been eligible for the Masters I did a few years later which incorporated a professional qualification.
That said, I am heavily in favour of my middle son’s plan to look for a degree apprenticeship rather than go to uni. The cost is insane and just not worth it for the university experience.