Useless Degrees, An Analysis

For a long time now, the debate has raged as to whether it’s worth going to college anymore.  The libertarian view on this question has typically been along the lines of… if people are foolish enough to waste money on worthless degrees, the world will soon enough teach them another lesson.  While valid, that view ran aground on the Democrat vote-buying scheme to insulate those with useless degrees from the consequences of their poor choices and indebtedness, with our tax money.

The cynical motives behind this ploy aside, I very much doubt many students enroll in college with the intention of eventually being bailed out by their fellow citizens.  These bright, young minds have simply bought into the hype that a college degree, any degree, is the ticket to prosperity.  That might have been mostly true, back in the day when the people who ran higher education actually focused on educating.  In the past, a degree could give someone who was willing to work hard a leg up on the competition.  Somewhere along the road, we lost sight of the fact that hard work was the not-so-secret essential ingredient, not that scrap of paper with the fancy calligraphy on it.  Through greed and cowardly moral blindness, the grifters who run our colleges have transformed these venerable institutions into the educational equivalent of shady time-shares.

Although the rot is extensive and accelerating, there are still college degrees which might be worth the time and money thrown at them—medicine, science, engineering, and a few others.  Better learn fast though.  These disciplines remain only relatively uncorrupted because they’re harder to infiltrate.  In the spirit of the hard sciences, it’s informative to analyze which college degrees are the more useless, and why.  Rational analysis, scorned as patriarchal, racist, and colonialist, comes in handy when exposing scams.

Upon reflection, it appears that “useless” degrees share one or more common traits:

• Lack of Job Market (outside of academia or government subsidies)

• Not Data-Driven

• Demands Post Grad Degrees

• General Lack of Scholarly Rigor

• Rampant Groupthink and Plagiarism

Look upon these features as red flags.  The more of these red flags a field of “study” flies, the higher the likelihood recipients of these degrees will wind up as a burden on society.  More bluntly, a burden on you.  Below is a table of arbitrarily-chosen college degrees, rated on the scale described above.

Image created by the author.

Some may quibble with the labels or applicability of the red-flag traits, or the number of flags assigned to certain degrees.  But the overall method of analysis is valid.  This can serve as a road map of sheepskins to avoid.  The more of these boxes are checked, the more money colleges will scam out of you, and the less likely you are to ever earn it back.

Further, it’s enlightening to contrast the differences between the upper reaches of the table with the lower.  Those degrees with a score of 2 are not inherently useless, but they simply provide less opportunity in the private sector.  There just aren’t that many open positions for astronomers, dancers, etc…  The jobs are there, and arguably provide a measurable benefit to society, but it doesn’t take much of a pipeline to satisfy the demand.  Historically, people embarking on these careers realize that they’ll be scrapping for the few jobs out there, and accept the low pay which the law of supply and demand enforces.

So, why would anyone choose such a fate?  The answer is passion.  The people who become dancers, archaeologists, photographers, artists, and art historians simply can’t imagine following any other calling.  They pay for that passion with an expected lack of financial security.  They will spend the rest of their careers singing for their supper.  And who am I to say they are wrong?

Of course, the already wealthy have the luxury of studying whatever strikes their fancy at college.  Financial security doesn’t enter into the calculation, having been previously addressed by successful relatives.  And, I am reliably informed that some people attend college simply to find and hogtie a spouse; but that subject is beyond the scope of this discussion.

English as a degree is a special case.  An English major has been the clichéd useless degree, even before the current unpleasantness.  Ironically, an English degree is not actually useless.  English departments are simply clogged with useless people—both students, and faculty.  The unconstrained, open nature of literary analysis and composition attracts people who see it as an easy ride.  In reality, an English degree teaches how to convey concepts effectively, which is an extremely useful skill.  However, the fuel to make that engine run is an elusive mixture of honesty, hustle, and hard work.  Build that combination and the job opportunities are nearly limitless.

Then we come to the odious top of the table.  Communications is no more than an English degree, stripped of any scholarly rigor and diluted with multi-media focus to a ridiculous easy-pass version.  As one wit quipped, the only purpose of sociologists is to breed more sociologists.  Any degree which ends in the trigger word “studies” is a contrived pyramid scheme, manufactured to wring money out of the student’s bank account while simultaneously fostering an entitled, sullen, negative view of life.  This scam only seemed to be viable while corporations fell for the DEI grift.  But all pyramid schemes collapse eventually.  Those with black-, queer-, women-, media-, fill-in-the-blank studies degrees are left holding the bag.

Saddest of all is an educational degree.  Frankly, these people should know better.  Learning is supposed to be their business.  They have coarsened it to the level of organized crime.  Not only do they pump out too many teachers for the available teaching jobs, but those teachers are trained to indoctrinate, not teach.

The root cause of this mess is, as is often the case, an over-intrusive government.  Leftists cling to the belief that all people and institutions must serve the state as an unchallenged article of faith.  That certainly applies to education.  By bribing academia with essentially unlimited funds via guaranteed student loans, it uncoupled school administrations from any but feigned concern for students.  The math is brutal, but inescapable.  More students processed, and the longer you can trap them in the system, translates to more money from Uncle Sugar; the quantity of degrees puked out matters, not quality.

Some time ago, a scholar surveyed institutions in Europe which had survived the past several hundred years of tumultuous history there.  The findings were surprising.  A handful of church denominations and parliaments were still standing.  However, dozens and dozens of universities across the continent had somehow floated serenely on the blood-soaked tide of history, still functioning amidst the chaos.  Universities can be resilient institutions.  Physically there’s not much there to destroy.  All that is really needed is a place to sit, students eager to learn, and professors willing to teach.

And yet, we have found a surefire way to kill universities.  Simply pay them to teach lies and useless nonsense.  Sooner or later, they commit suicide.  What an accomplishment.

Image generated by AI.