Why do schools offer so many useless degrees?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Good luck getting a job with that gender studies degree. You’ll be back in here in a year whining about student debt and begging for forgiveness. I do think that colleges are accountable to students to describe potential career paths and earning potential by major.

Better off than without a degree. In the long term.

Not if you are hounded by $200k in debt. My niece had to declare bankruptcy (yes I know that federal loans cannot be discharged by bankruptcy-she owed everywhere)

Nobody has $200,000 in debt for an undergraduate degree. The average debt is $30k.

https://studentaccounts.gwu.edu/undergraduate-tuitionGW ain't cheap.

Then don’t go to GW? It’s an insanely expensive private university. I repeat, the average student debt is like $30,000 at the most.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Off the top of my head, I can think of multiple schools that offer 4+1 MBA programs (right after undergrad!!). Then, there’s stand-alone majors offered at many schools like criminology, cybersecurity, criminal justice, entrepreneurship, pharmacology, and insurance.

Go back to the basics, people.

Schools offer classes in what students want. You'll notice how few offer Western Civ., Latin, Greek - dead white male stuff anymore.

great job being a racist yourself

amazing how you were able to tie white males to programs of study in a purely racist manner. What will you have to complain about when you dont have white males to pin all your failures on?

? Sorry you took it that way. You shouldn't have. That's a well known criticism of these programs that anyone in them knows very well. There are many books on this that use this exact term including "The Oldest Dead White European Males" by Bernard Knox. Indeed, Alan Bloom discussed the criticism if academia in "The Closing of the American Mind" more than 40 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are tons of worthless college majors. History is pretty useless if you’re not going to teach history. All these people end up employed somewhere regardless because employers want to see the BA/BS.

The trade school mentality displayed by so many people on DCUM is amazing.

A degree in history from a strong program will teach students to do research with primary sources, evaluate the strength of evidence, uncover biases or blind spots in prior writing about a topic, and get up to speed on a subject sufficiently to write an informed opinion quickly. Those are great qualification for most jobs that don’t require specific technical training.

My undergrad with “international studies” (mostly history) and now I run a software company. From my undergrad, I developed the ability to quickly get up to speed on clients’ businesses and to architect and present solutions in a compelling way. Clients are pleased when I can tie features in our software to specific court decisions in their field that required certain practices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are tons of worthless college majors. History is pretty useless if you’re not going to teach history. All these people end up employed somewhere regardless because employers want to see the BA/BS.

The trade school mentality displayed by so many people on DCUM is amazing.

A degree in history from a strong program will teach students to do research with primary sources, evaluate the strength of evidence, uncover biases or blind spots in prior writing about a topic, and get up to speed on a subject sufficiently to write an informed opinion quickly. Those are great qualification for most jobs that don’t require specific technical training.

My undergrad with “international studies” (mostly history) and now I run a software company. From my undergrad, I developed the ability to quickly get up to speed on clients’ businesses and to architect and present solutions in a compelling way. Clients are pleased when I can tie features in our software to specific court decisions in their field that required certain practices.

But what school did you go to? It’s just reality that outside of top schools where it barely matters what you major, you’re better off majoring in a “trade school degree.” Additionally, some of us had student loans and needed majors with immediate payoff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are tons of worthless college majors. History is pretty useless if you’re not going to teach history. All these people end up employed somewhere regardless because employers want to see the BA/BS.

The trade school mentality displayed by so many people on DCUM is amazing.

A degree in history from a strong program will teach students to do research with primary sources, evaluate the strength of evidence, uncover biases or blind spots in prior writing about a topic, and get up to speed on a subject sufficiently to write an informed opinion quickly. Those are great qualification for most jobs that don’t require specific technical training.

My undergrad with “international studies” (mostly history) and now I run a software company. From my undergrad, I developed the ability to quickly get up to speed on clients’ businesses and to architect and present solutions in a compelling way. Clients are pleased when I can tie features in our software to specific court decisions in their field that required certain practices.

Key word = 'Strong Program'

For that kind of majors, you better go to like a T20ish schools to get decent opportunities.

Some people also get lucky.

Bill Gates and Mark Jukerberg dropped out of college.
What does that mean?
Nothing.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Off the top of my head, I can think of multiple schools that offer 4+1 MBA programs (right after undergrad!!). Then, there’s stand-alone majors offered at many schools like criminology, cybersecurity, criminal justice, entrepreneurship, pharmacology, and insurance.

Go back to the basics, people.

I think you're in the extreme minority on this -- many of those you named are extremely valuable to have, both in terms of income and importance to the country.

OP here. I consider liberal arts degrees in subjects like history, English, psychology, mathematics , biology etc to be useful.

Yeah, fine -- but you said those others you named are "useless." I consider that pretty ill-informed.

Well, my cousin's son had a psych degree and ended up working as a phlebotomist at a plasma donation site for several years. But then he went back to school got some undergrad pharmacology studies in, and did grad school to become a pharmacist--or is it pharmacologist with a grad degree?? I would imagine that degrees like cyber security probably combine CS requirements with specific other coursework.

One thing that surprises me is how many people with online degrees from for profit outfits get legit jobs (those who, of course, finish the training). My son is seeing a psychologist through his healthcare provider network. I looked her up and her degree is from, I think it was called Argosy University, an online university that went under within the last couple of years. I looked into it further and the APA worked to help students nearing graduation find ways to complete degree and clinical training requirements. And I'm glad I kept my mouth shut when my nephew went for an accounting degree through Rasmussen, another online university--he's now a Microsoft accountant and doing very well. There's a part of me that wants to sneer at those for profit places but apparently they have some legitimacy. (And of course a century or more ago business courses were done through for-profit schools rather than traditional universities, my grandfather did that)