Sorry if this has been posted before. And I’ll be real, I didn’t use the search facility before posting. So excuse me if it has been discussed already. I’m not shocked by anything on this list though. I am only shocked by the position. I thought liberal arts was surely going to be at number 1, as till this day I am not away of any practical use for that degree. Does anyone else have any opinions about this?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/10/11/the-10-worst-college-majors/
Well sorry, I’m not nearly as active on SRK I use to be. So I wouldn’t know if this article get posted very 6 months
The data isn’t really focused on practical usefulness, just employment rate and initial salary. Film and art majors have a higher unemployment rate than philosophy majors, probably because there are a lot more of them. Also, religious studies is part of liberal arts and there are a lot of jobs available in that field.
The tone of the article really sickens me, though. This guy’s quote: “Most young people in college take whatever interests them, without thinking what it can really do for them.”, as if money is the only thing a degree can give you.
As far as I’m concerned, doing what you love is the only important thing in life. Maybe those young people pursuing the “worst” degrees really are thinking about their own happiness, and the people who write trash articles like this and force their kids into careers they don’t enjoy are the thoughtless ones.
Exactly. Not like you can’t have a BFA [which I’ll be getting] and not be able to do a side hustle with that. There are plenty of jobs that don’t care what your major is. They just want you to have a BA in something. My BF got his Masters in Networking and is working in server storage. Still IT, but what he went to school for barely has any bearing as to what he’s doing for his job.
BAs now are about the equivalent of what a high school diploma use to mean. Just another way to separate individuals without having to directly do it.
/Shrug
I can’t agree with you there. You most certainly can be happy learning whatever you want to learn. For the most part learning is free. If you want to learn more about religion, philosophy, etc there are more than enough books on this topic I’m sure. And you can be self taught in things like photography or film. The same with Fine Arts, etc. Even if there wasn’t a perspective you saw things from, or a technical detail you weren’t aware of, a book will generally teach you what you need to know. So now answer me this, why would anyone need a degree for something they can learn on their own? I mean in these days in time, you can EASILY teach yourself anything. The only reason you would spend thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars is to better your career. If you simply want knowledge, you sure as hell don’t need to gain it at the expense of your (or let’s be real your parents) money.
Because Fine Arts teaches more than the technical aspect of it. We have to take some business classes so we know how to market ourselves better and how to not get screwed over by possible clients.
A masters in networking? Why the hell would someone even offer such a degree? Unless they’re trying to teach you the fundamentals of how data is transmitted, that’s just a waste. I’m not knocking him, but as someone who has been in the IT industry his entire adult life (I started at 19 now I’m 33), I can tell you a Masters in Networking almost makes no sense. Plus the IT industry is saturated enough with people trying to do networking. It’s almost the first thing people try to learn about when they try to enter the field. In reality there is an overwhelmingly scarcity of developers and software engineers. They easily clear 6 figure salaries after only 5 or 6 years of industry experience. I mean there HAS to be some other perks like them being taught by CCIE holders, having their higher level cert test paid for, or guaranteeing an CCIE certification at the end of it all. And really no one without real world experience can even attempt to take the CCIE, the test is just that difficult.
I really hate to sound negative, but you were trying to make a point, and you really don’t have one. Your boyfriend doesn’t seem to have done a lot of research on the IT industry, and no matter what field you’re in, you better sure as hell be researching things before you bother to go to school for it.
I’m sure what you learn in your business class could easily be learned in a book you pick up from Barnes And Nobles. The thing with engineering, especially electrical engineering, and subfields of math like computer science is that you actually take very difficult classes. And as someone who loves computer science, I can even sit here and admit you can learn almost anything they’ll teach in a computer science program on your own. So I’m sure you can learn business concerning Fine Art on your own as well. And I don’t want to sound negative, but I do want to drive the point home that you should be going to school to make yourself more marketable.
This list makes sense. What the list didn’t mention is the most valuable majors are the hardest/ most difficult degrees to attain. I think the rate of law and medical majors who actually reach eligibility to become lawyers or doctors is dream shatteringly low compared to what’s on the list.
This economy is just hard all around. That’s why you have to take up whatever it is you love and find-out-of-the-box ways to make money off of it. Or just use it as a tool to show off on your résumé for some low to middle class job who close to half the time might reject you as an overachiever.
Best thing to do, start small at a community college or take up an apprenticeship, volunteer, intern, or even click up with people who share your passion. Also, read books.
people should do what they love
but people take that way to literally and to the extreme without really understanding what it means.
I like to make stuff.
But im not fucking stupid, I want things, I want to provide someday. Why not get into a field that gives me the ability to do that. You can’t have the pie and eat it all, as with anything. Unless you are rich, you can’t live of what you love unless you really get lucky or go into a field where money can be made.
If you can’t find a job and make money off of your degree it is practically useless. Yes, there are heaps of jobs of religious studies and liberal arts majors - it’s called working at McDonald’s and slinging coffee at Starbucks if you are lucky.
It can give you knowledge and if you are into knowledge in and of itself that’s fine. I just think paying tens of thousands of dollars for these worthless degrees is not a smart decision unless you are from a rich family and have money to throw around.
I think it’s far more irresponsible to tell naive kids into doing whatever and rack themselves with tens of thousands of dollars of student debt, effectively making them indentured servants. But hey, what do I know I’m just some guy on the net spouting nonsense right? Let the down votes flow, I don’t care.
Worst of worst. Shit!
I’m a liberal arts major. But I ended up going to Le Cordon Bleu after undergrad and I’m considering going back for my masters in the future.
Might not be the “best” major to have but the curriculum is very well-rounded.
If you are smart and have drive you can do what you want and make money.
If you are really smart go for a higher degree in a field that pays well.
You think i wanted to sling drugs for a living? To the old and the sick and the whatever?
School was easy. So i did it. My job is a way for me to pay for the things i want and do what i like to do in my spare time.
Pharmacy school is getting harder to get into nowadays but in a decade or two will probably be obsolete.
Oh well i have a pharmd and will probably get my masters in chemistry.
Easy job. Pays well. Good benefits. Fuckin around on The internet meh. And enough hours for me to have free time to do what i want.
The people complaining about having a bs/ba and not getting them a job in the field they want chose the wrong fields.
Idiots with english degrees and no aspirations to teach
Idiots with philosophy degrees and knowing how pointless it is yet still wasting $100k getting a pointless degree.
Idiots
By their logic, education itself is a bad idea. You’d be further ahead financially to take the money it would cost to earn a degree and invest it in a small business or buy tools and become an apprentice tradesmen.
It’s more than just a Networking. I believe it was Network Security and Management. Something along those lines. And like I said, he doesn’t even **DO **networking. He’s a storage consultant/engineer and does server storage on both commercial and enterprise levels. He’s working for a company called CDI, on Isilon and other EMC products, with clients like North Shore LIJ, BET, Chanel, Kenyon & Kenyon Law Firm, Sony and others I can’t even remember. Isilon even sent him a job offer recently because he won best EMC partner of the year for his company by implementing and servicing Isilon products to companies that want a better server solution.
Pretty sure he’s doing quite fine since he makes more money than a teacher starting out and even after tenure. 
It is, the majority of education is a terrible idea.
can’t do shit with a Chemistry/Biology/Physics degree unless you have a Masters, and even then the job isn’t guaranteed unless you have a PH.D
Definetly cannot do anything with ART unless you are that 1 in a million
Cannot do anything with Music unless you luck out
English can do, but you have to step way outside of your comfort zone and be more than willing to move
And Engineering is going in the same direction also. Large influx of cheap labor from India and China is going to bite me in the ass, and force me to be even more competitive.
Meanwhile
My douchebag boss
Is some fucking foerigner, can’t speak English, terrible people skills, but is making easily 25k take home every month running a small hole in the wall restaurant.
And I know a lot of people that didn’t bother with school, and instead went into things like welding and other trades and are now making 25+ dollarsls an hours.
Granted, they are going have to worry about keeping their jobs and moving at moments notice, while somebody like me doesn’t have to worry as much about that once I have established myself. But have to worry about crippling debt and other school related bullshit.
Really? For my Visual Arts major, I have to take History classes on Western Arts. I did think about taking up business classes lately, though. I’ll have to look into that.
My family is always telling me to study in certain areas because of the money and whether I need to fall back on something. The thing is that they don’t understand the amount of time you take studying for a major unless you take a shit load of classes in one semester. They want me to go into cybersecurity or Homeland Security when I had never looked into those areas. I do plan on getting an BA in a different area.
Aside from the article going into salaries and unemployment rates, what do they expect you to major in?
A lot of the people dissing the article don’t seem to understand it. If you are looking at college from a practical sense, those majors don’t offer much in terms of career. That isn’t to say that they don’t supplement other majors well. The more ways you can get your brain to analyze a situation the better you are. But looking at college as extended life training for the rest of your life, some of the majors suck ass.
shotouts to anthropology: half the people think I dig shit and the other think they can talk about culture on the same level as me. On top of that they do a shitty job of teaching people how to do honest research they can apply in the workplace. lol GGs.
This article gets posted on yahoo news like weekly, and the top majors are usually… CS, Engineering of some kind, Nursing, Business, shit like that.
I’m a CS grad and slowly realizing I really don’t enjoy it at all anymore. But if I was considering following my passion for music, I think I would have just skipped college altogether. In the words of one of my old music teachers, “I don’t need a piece of paper that says I can play, you can hear it!” Unless there’s connections to be made like going to UCLA/USC film school I don’t see the payoff in attending college for the arts.