Stop doing terrible degrees!

Shut up. women's studies and modern feminism are a great choice. when I leave I am going to become a Internet blogger and earn £100's a year

How many people do you think are studying undergraduate degrees in Gender Studies in the UK?

Did a "useless" degree - at a mediocre university and got a mediocre grade (low 2.1). I don't regret it in the slightest. I had the time of my life, met amazing people, learned to be an independent functioning adult, learned a host of transferable skills and it led to me doing a more useful degree that I wouldn't have even known about before (let alone got on to). I am now in the type of career path I wanted all along. Even if I could go back and do my second degree straight away I wouldn't - I'm equally proud of both my degrees.*

Those people that disagree with this are those that the OP is talking about.

It's not just a personal matter. People wasting three years at university just to get a piece of paper that makes them more attractive in the labor market, is a huge waste of resources.

In one sense even, you need a degree, but often it doesn't matter what degree, the paper just matters. So it is understandable for people to pick what they enjoy rather than what is practical or useful.

Hi,

I know my making this post is going to raise a lot of anger, especially among the new-age mob who say passion and determination are the only factors levying success, but sadly I have seen a lot of posts giving students terrible advice regarding their academic future by telling them a degree in a non-vocational and non-traditional subject will have little impact on their future job prospects. Put simply, it is morally indefensible to advice young people that a degree in some bizarre liberal arts discipline is a good use of their one-off student loan; employers nowadays have an abundance of graduates whom to choose from and being disadvantaged in one aspect of your personal profile because you were fed misinformation by your peers will lead many young graduates fighting it out for low-paid employment.

Of course there will be people who will tell you how they've become a millionaire with their English degree from London Met, but we also need to have a sense of perspective. Do not go to university if you are not sure what you want to do with the rest of your life. University is expensive. And is £50,000 of student debt a burden you want to carry when you don't even have an end-plan in mind? There are a lot of graduate opportunities available for students who graduate from any university with a 2:1, but if you don't possess much added-experience alongside your academic qualifications, then the subject discipline holds a lot relevance. My Area Manager, who is a young graduate, told me that he was informed during his application process that students with "weak degrees in weak subjects" are ignored during selection. He said the degree that you choose to study at university says a lot about you as a person and the level of work ethic you acquire as well. Spending time in industry and developing proper work experience is a much better and more efficient use of time for those who don't know what they want to do than going to university, as work experience is paramount for employers and the on-the-work pay is an added bonus as well.

Here's an excellent video I'd advice you all to watch:

[video="youtube;CVEuPmVAb8o"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVEuPmVAb8o[/video]

Remember, just because you're "passionate about something, it doesn't mean you're good at it".

*grabs popcorn* now THIS is the quality content I come on this website for.

In seriousness OP, if you're writing this out of genuine concern for people choosing degrees you've termed "useless" then bless your big warm heart. However, if you're studing Economics with Russian/"Chinese" or whatever, it's pretty clear that you'll know very little about what a languages degree would look like, or a biology degree, or one in law, or maths, or any other of the subjects you've listed. The information you've got on those subjects is the same old nonsense touted by sensationalist 'newspapers' that feed off (some) STEM students' superiority and (some) arts' applicants insecurity (I was really hoping for alliteration, but alas): ""If countries are going to win in the global race and children compete and get the best jobs, you need mathematicians and scientists – pure and simple." It's this kind of quote you're referring to isn't it, advocates of STEM over humanities, right?

Wrong. This quote has been absolutely slated for the "pure and simple" method of which the speaker reinforces the entrenched dichotomy between arts and science; there is nothing "simple" about generations of kids growing up and choosing their own paths. We will always have mathematicians, we will always have doctors, we will always have scientists, and Lord knows we will always have lawyers. The Law job market is utterly saturated as it already is, and the opportunities for Law graduates are incredibly poor. So why is it still considered a "good" subject? Because the fallacy you're perpetuating is that the salary of a Law student in 10 years should be equated to the salary of an arts graduate after 1 year.

Looking at a university course comparing site, the "average graduate salary" for economics varies from £32k at LSE, to £24k at Sheffield, to £18k at Manchester. Pretty decent. But for Law, it's varying between £19k and £16k. Does that mean that Law has now become null and void, because the average salary is so far behind economics? Like hell it does! Lawyers earn an unfathomable amount after they get settled in their field and eventually work their way up to become barristers or whatever they do there. Looking again for history or english, it's getting a similar variety from £16k-£21k at Durham for english, to £17k-£23k for history. Does this now mean history and english should be bumped up higher because they have the same starting salaries as law?

The point I'm trying to make here is that salary is a very illogical way to judge a subject's "worth". Hell, any method is a terrible way to judge its "worth", because what's the reason for judging it? Why do you get to judge if a particular subject is fit for studying? People will continue to choose the arts for the same reason continue to choose studying STEM subjects: they consider their subject useful for what they want to do and where they want to go, they're interested enough to study it for the next 3 or 4 years, they're blooming good at it, and they've researched it enough to know what it would entail.

Don't discredit other people's choices because they're not like yours.

*grabs popcorn* now THIS is the quality content I come on this website for.

In seriousness OP, if you're writing this out of genuine concern for people choosing degrees you've termed "useless" then bless your big warm heart. However, if you're studing Economics with Russian/"Chinese" or whatever, it's pretty clear that you'll know very little about what a languages degree would look like, or a biology degree, or one in law, or maths, or any other of the subjects you've listed. The information you've got on those subjects is the same old nonsense touted by sensationalist 'newspapers' that feed off (some) STEM students' superiority and (some) arts' applicants insecurity (I was really hoping for alliteration, but alas): ""If countries are going to win in the global race and children compete and get the best jobs, you need mathematicians and scientists – pure and simple." It's this kind of quote you're referring to isn't it, advocates of STEM over humanities, right?

Wrong. This quote has been absolutely slated for the "pure and simple" method of which the speaker reinforces the entrenched dichotomy between arts and science; there is nothing "simple" about generations of kids growing up and choosing their own paths. We will always have mathematicians, we will always have doctors, we will always have scientists, and Lord knows we will always have lawyers. The Law job market is utterly saturated as it already is, and the opportunities for Law graduates are incredibly poor. So why is it still considered a "good" subject? Because the fallacy you're perpetuating is that the salary of a Law student in 10 years should be equated to the salary of an arts graduate after 1 year.

Looking at a university course comparing site, the "average graduate salary" for economics varies from £32k at LSE, to £24k at Sheffield, to £18k at Manchester. Pretty decent. But for Law, it's varying between £19k and £16k. Does that mean that Law has now become null and void, because the average salary is so far behind economics? Like hell it does! Lawyers earn an unfathomable amount after they get settled in their field and eventually work their way up to become barristers or whatever they do there. Looking again for history or english, it's getting a similar variety from £16k-£21k at Durham for english, to £17k-£23k for history. Does this now mean history and english should be bumped up higher because they have the same starting salaries as law?

The point I'm trying to make here is that salary is a very illogical way to judge a subject's "worth". Hell, any method is a terrible way to judge its "worth", because what's the reason for judging it? Why do you get to judge if a particular subject is fit for studying? People will continue to choose the arts for the same reason continue to choose studying STEM subjects: they consider their subject useful for what they want to do and where they want to go, they're interested enough to study it for the next 3 or 4 years, they're blooming good at it, and they've researched it enough to know what it would entail.

Don't discredit other people's choices because they're not like yours.

Very good especially the last line, which sums the OP up very well.

Would you say Primary Education is a terrible degree?
I'm planning on becoming a primary school teacher so the degree is useful. But the issue with it is that the degree isn't STEM and the salary isn't much.

Yeah a lot of the time a degree just serves as a piece of paper to prove you're not useless. Jobs that are open to any degree could be done by anyone who's intelligent, but they'd have way too many applicants to deal with if they removed the degree requirement.

Woohoo a future teacher! I'm planning on becoming a teacher too 😊 Any sort of teaching degree isn't useless as without teachers no one else will be doing degrees. What year are you in btw?

So the solution is to waste people's time for three years and to waste money and resources in the economy just so they themselves have a slightly easier time sorting applications?

Seems legit.