I went to college/university so I can be a Janitor!

Most degrees (yes, even philosophy) can get you a good job if you know how to present yourself and did well in school. Granted, I work in a more open field (consulting), but I've met people with 6 figure salaries that majored in french art. If you've got the intelligence, can think on your feet, and can solve problems, people will want to hire you. If there's something interesting about you that makes you stick out more than the other applicants, more the better. My degree in Spanish got me my current job, not because I work at all with Spanish, but because the hiring manager thought it was interesting. Especially for degrees that get really specific, it's unlikely that you'll find a good paying job doing exactly that, but most degrees can be applied in interesting ways. Another friend of mine majored in women's studies (focusing on international women's issues) and is now working with the state department. Obviously, this isn't true for every job, but I know a lot of companies that would pay good money for English majors. Not because they'll be writing articles or editing, but because knowing how to communicate effectively is a skill that a surprising number of people lack.

 

I have a BFA in Writing and Publishing with a concentration in magazine publishing. I was fully supporting myself as a freelance writer for the first year and a half after graduation, until the steadiest gig abruptly ended last Fall because Google gave up on what they bought the company for and apparently doesn't have enough money to pay people. I have a pretty impressive portfolio and resume for someone my age that graduated when I did. I still have a couple of writing/"communications" jobs, and even this Planned Parenthood job I just got to pay bills is technically the most entry-level position in their communications department and can lead to positions I'd actually want to do. I'm still optimistic that the full-time job I'll eventually get after this awful freelancing period will be related to my major and how I've been expanding on it so far.

The school I went to was basically a hipster vocational school, so the majors were all practical (at least as practical as arts and communications majors can be). The only really silly major I heard of from my friends' schools was at an art school, where there was a major to be the type of artist that basically does weird stuff on the street. They tried to make it sound more important than that, but I'm pretty sure that's what they all ended up doing after graduation anyway. At least with illustration or painting or graphic design there is a chance, albeit a slim one, of actually doing something with the degree. But those kids were fucked.

 

Was waiting for this one. I specifically did English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing as a foundation to go into Script Writing and Acting. It's worked out pretty well so far. I actually had a plan for my English degree, outside of being a teacher. I've also made a lot of connections outside of the major, since a lot of students in my English classes had a joint degree. But, I could see why not being able to write could be seen as insignificant, considering people only care about numbers nowadays.

 

I graduated with a BS in Construction Management which is an amalgamation of civil engineering, structural engineering, surveying and business administration. I left college qualified as a professional contractor, already to sit for the FE and one class short of sitting for my LSIT (land surveyor in training).

What did I do? I left college and 3 months later ended up in the mountains of Southeast Afghanistan working as the field engineer on an $80MM contract. I spent most of my twenties living in every war-torn shithole in the Middle East. This was a real privalege that many others in this field would have killed for, and it had nothing to do with my grades or the degree I received. It had everything to do with what people here have already said......I interned with this same company for two years prior to graduating. I busted my ass 80 hours a week for two summers as a photocopy jockey in the home office doing the absolute best I could to make a good impression on the people there.

Did the degree help? Sure it did. It taught me a different mindset.....we were the only major with 7 a.m. classes. We were taught that you were going to be expected to be the first guy there and the last guy to leave. No skipping class, I missed four lectures and received an L for a grade....failure due to lack of attendance. Do I use it? Somewhat. I never sat for the FE or LSIT. No need, I went into management; but it would be useful if you want to Survey or do design.

ALT Focus
As many here have already said and I really hate to bash the fine arts because they are important to society but most of these degrees are almost pointless. You are paying a lot of money for something you aren't unlikely to see any return on. I also have a hard time imagining that the kind of talent that will earn you a good income can be taught, I may be wrong, but it seems that this talent would be innate.

Liberal Arts aren't much better though, the unfortunate thing about it is that kids going to college are very impressionable and it seems that a lot of Liberal Arts schools are poisoning the minds of kids these days with these socialist and borderline communist ideas and making them feel that this is how the majority of people feel. I say this as someone who has traveled to a lot of these places that their professors romanticize for them and have to tell them that there isn't anything romantic about them or the way they live.

 

Apparently, you were only taught to write, not read. I asked if a four year degree imparts some level of ability that cannot be achieved through other programs or pathways. Most, if not all, American degrees require basic English courses in their general education section. Several science degrees offer technical writing courses, too. Are you honestly telling me that I need ~90 hours of writing-based courses to communicate effectively?

Bully for you and your life plan. I wasn't singling you (or any other English or fine arts major on this board) out. I made a generalization that has been proven true repeatedly. How many arts majors do you know that are unemployed, underemployed, or employed in a field only related to their degree via a skill they may have honed in their program but could have easily honed in another field (like written communication)? Now ask yourself the same about people you know with applied math and science degrees.

 

I have a BA in communications (specifically, broadcast communications) and with that, I went to work in advertising. From the agency side, I moved to the other side of the desk and went into ad sales, sales management and magazine and digital media publishing. College course I used most in that phase of my career: Theory of Coaching, taught by our head basketball coach. It's all about motivation and building cohesion.

Sure, there are some lame excuses for majors out there (the puppet artistry one astounds me--are they referred to as Giapetto Scholars?), but there's the rare individual who can make that really work. Will Shortz is the current editor of the NYTimes crossword puzzle (that's the Papacy of cruciverbalism). He went to Indiana U where you can design your own major. He said he wanted to major in puzzles and puzzle design, made a case for it, got it approved, and did it (I have no idea what classes one takes and who teaches them, but I'm assuming there was a fair amount of independent study). He took over the post at the Times at a relatively young age (I think he was in his early 40s, possibly younger) and literally brought the Times crossword to a whole new level, much to the dismay of his predecessor, Eugene T. Maleska who held pop culture references in high disdain.

So yeah, he majored in puzzles. He's doing what he loves, and he's doing it at the pinnacle of the profession. Rare outcome, but it never would have happened if he didn't go for it.

A friend in high school had a younger brother who went to Rutger's and majored in art history. His father constantly mocked him, and never missed an opportunity to chide him about how his degree would help him move up the chain at McDonalds faster than his coworkers. Well, he got full scholarship to get his MFA from Columbia and they also paid for him to spend two summers in Italy to study. He's now a curator at one of the museums in NYC. Last time I talked to him, he wasn't bitching about his job the way his old man bitched about his.

I agree with what others have said though about meandering through college and simply ending up with a degree due solely to having completed the most classes in that major. If you're in college and you're still unsure about what you want to do and what you want to major in, go to your career counseling center (not yor academic advisor) on campus and ask for a vocational assessment. It's the best starting point for career exploration and a career counselor can help guide you through a wealth of information on literally 1000s of careers in a systematic way.

 

Focus: I have a degree in mechanical engineering and I currently work in the engineering field. I work in materials engineering as opposed to mechanical engineering but I do use some of the stuff I learned in school.

Alt-Focus: I was the king of taking dumb classes unrelated to my major in college. I took archery, a swimming class, a class where I became a certified lifeguard, two semesters of martial arts and a photography course (never did manage to convince any girls that I had a project that required a nude model). Surprisingly enough, the photography course has been very useful to me as I frequently have to photo-document things at work and knowing how to manipulate things like depth of field is useful.

 

My roommate in the dorm a couple years ago was a sculpture major. He graduated last summer with his MFA. He also works a lot of manual labor jobs, while simultaneously pursuing what he loves: sculpture.

He is not a dumb man, by any means. He knew full well what to expect when he made that his major. The most important thing, he said, was to go into it with open eyes, knowing full well that he'd be broke for several years afterwards. On the other hand, he also has many professional contacts within his field, such as people like this. Being a professional artist comes with a lot of sacrifice; it doesn't happen overnight.

I guess my point here is that yes, those degree programs you mentioned are prone to underemployment, but people in those programs should also be honest with themselves and acknowledge that they aren't lucrative fields to begin with. Aspirations in those fields should come from a place of passion, not with the hope of becoming rich some day.

 

Not speaking directly to the value of the English degree, but what I noticed in undergrad is that most English majors didn't actually even plan on doing anything with the degree. They didn't even like literature that much, it was like they just decided to grab an easy major out of apathy and confusion... This I could never understand.

I mean, I get accepting the value-risk of an English degree if it is your dream to do something related to literature in literally ANY way, and I support it, but if you don't care, what the hell?

Edit: I guess to give my own spiel, I have degrees in English and Philosophy. I've had a job completely because of the English degree which was alright though it didn't pay too much (copy editing and poetry layout on a fairly popular lit journal), and I'm currently in grad school for the philosophy. If I had to take out loans this would all be ridiculous, but I'm poor and smart and thus debt free. I don't think I'd mind being a janitor too much to be honest. I did roofing, siding, concrete, decks, framing, etc... for years, none of it was so bad. Most of the time now when people ask me what I'm going to do with the Philosophy, I usually say, "Oh, that's not for a job, that's just so I can learn to be ok with my old shitty job." Whatever.

 

Well, at least some of them start out with something they think they want and transfer in. We have it ingrained in our society (and to a stupid extent it's true) that you need a college degree to succeed. If you're going to be in college anyway, and don't have a specific field you want to focus on, you may as well pick something that's easy and/or fits your skill set.

In fact that's how I wound up with a math degree, I started with accounting, found it boring, switched to nutrition which was my passion at the time, found out it wasn't what I thought it was, then switched to the degree I could finish in the least amount of time.

Don't get me wrong, there were other factors like my roommate busting out a calculus book and me enjoying tutoring him, but that's basically how I got there.

 

I think I disagree with the spirit of your post.

I agree that it's possible to gain writing/editing skills in a number of ways. But for a lot of people, having a curriculum and dedicated guidance by a professional in the field is invaluable. Being part of a community that is full of people that love the same thing you do is tremendously helpful. Being forced to hone your craft day after day is an entirely different thing from sitting in your patent office scribbling away your opus. A few people can do the latter, but not many.

Comparing a Creative Writing major to a few technical writing courses misses the point. If you care about writing, you're not just trying to explain. You're trying to expound. To explicate. To evoke in a sense beyond simply describing rote description.

Do people fall into Liberal Arts majors out of indolence or aimlessness? Sure. But your argument strikes me as deliberately dismissive in a way that supports your own background.

 

I think the main point she is trying to make is not that it won't help you, but that it's not anywhere near worth the price tag. Think about it, two kids can go to the same school for different programs, one of them will graduate and probably start at 50k a year, the other will be lucky to get 30. They paid the same amount.

If you want to be a technical writer or whatever, that's fine, but there should be a different way to get there that doesn't involve paying a tuition bill you can't reasonably afford.

Think about all the people bitching about drowning in debt from their student loans? How many of them do you think are engineering majors? How many do you think are English majors?

 

You also can't assume everyone holds the same work/education values as you. (Not directed at anyone in particular here).

 

A) Yes. But it's hard not to get a job in [profession] when you go to [profession] school. You'd have to either big a really big fuck-up, or refuse to move where more jobs are available, or more likely, both.

B) I met someone (who went to an American university, I should clarify) who took a course that involved learning to camp. One lesson involved learning how to pack a backpack properly. I was appalled. Packing a backpack is fucking easy. It's the carrying part that's hard.

 

A lot of you are of the belief that university is a place where you go to learn facts and skills that will later be relevant for your job. A perfectly logical conclusion, but probably not true. And it never has been true, in the entire history of university education. In all likelihood, your employer hires you with the assumption that you've forgotten or never learned most of the things they'd like you to know. What they're looking for in terms of major is generally a signal of intelligence and general thought pattern. So if you major in philosophy and whatnot, the goal should then be to effectively communicate the challenges of the program of study (hopefully you actually took some challenging courses rather than the path of least resistance. Transcript is a pretty good signal in and of itself), and how the general modes of thoughts will be applicable in the contexts your looking to be hired.

Sure, majors like my own (math & econ) are valued in some part because of content, but it's overwhelmingly because:
1) people think a math major is really hard (it's not that hard, FYI), so those who succeed must be really smart
2) as Frank mentioned, it shows a general acuity with numbers and quantitative analysis
3) they show a sort of problem-solving, logical mindset that employers see as useless.

No one besides maybe grad school and a very, very small percentage of engineering jobs give two shits about your knowledge of Fourier Analysis.

Many majors are "useless," but could withstand a similar analysis to what I presented above. Philosophy, if you're doing it right, is really, really hard. There are plenty of jobs where the broad mindset of sociology and psychology are applicable and useful. If you can't sell that, well, that's your failing right there even moreso than choice in major.


Conversely, there are a number of practical majors (marketing, entrepreneurship, management, etc. Really any undergrad business program besides finance) that I wouldn't even hire to walk my own dog. Why? Because the typical degree of difficulty in those programs and the actual requirements for critical learning are practically nonexistant. What is considered to be A work at most undergraduate business schools (and by most, I practically mean everywhere except Wharton & MIT) wouldn't get that same grade at my high school, and my high school wasn't even that good.




A lot of talk has been given to internships. Honestly, the internship culture severely worries me, in that it is making the post-college employment scene even more of a rich man's game that it was before. I grew up upper-middle class, and was lucky enough to be able to get by during college and during internships with relative ease. A few part time jobs here and there, but no serious financial struggles. My internships were huge assets for me, and probably instrumental in getting the job I have now. But one paid a $2500 stipend for the summer in New York City, and the other paid minimum wage in DC. I was able to do them, but what about those less fortunate than me?

And I was lucky. The majority of college internships are completely unpaid, and especially for "prestigious" internships (for example, Congress doesn't pay). And yet we tell everyone tat these are requirements for a good job, and look down on any applicant without them. This leaves the kid who has to, for example, go home and work at his family business completely fucked. He's doing the responsible thing by helping out his folks, easing their financial burden, and living within his means....and will be punished for it.

 

This is a good point. A university degree isn't to prepare you for a job, it's there to instill you with a body of knowledge and, more importantly, a thought process. I, for example, spent about 8 months of my life staring at and mathematically interpreting and describing graphs like this:



The professor who taught that class once responded to a criticism of the utility of his course with "what's the point of me teaching you something you're going to learn after four months on the job anyways?". Then again, there are legions of alumni who think that guy's a huge douche, so.

But there's another thing to it as well. They could have taught us simple facts in school; "if you see this happen, do this. if you see that happen, do that instead". But in 20 years, all of the recommendations for what to do are going to change, and then all my knowledge will be really useless. If, given a particular problem in the future, I know what information I need, where to find it, and how to interpret it to come up with a reasonable solution.

 

Also, you guys love fetishing trades like plumbing as if they're some fail-safe financial safe haven. I don't know what makes you think that 1) those sociology majors are actually cut out to be good plumbers, and 2) that one plumber you met who "totally makes a ton of money" is a good example for the profession as a whole.

The median graduate of a four year college outearns the average plumber by somewhere in he ballpark of $8-10K. And those are the non-college-graduates who actually become plumbers, not the ones who are simply burnouts at the local gas station. An extra $8-10K annually will pay back most reasonably sized loans quickly enough, and the unemployment rates are drastically lower for those with a bachelor's degree.

The highest level of unemployment by major is in architecture.