Are arts, humanities and social science degrees useless?

Lets see some evidence apropos your second claim.

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/8721/title/-A-Profound-Crisis-of-Purpose-in-Social-Science-/

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/can-social-scientists-save-themselves-human-behavior-78858/

http://www.socialsciencespace.com/2014/07/statistics-crisis-of-reproducibility/

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/the-self-confidence-crisis-in-social-research/409089.article

The American Scientist also has dedicated article on this.

The first article is rather dated, although it is clear that there is considerable controversy in the value of the social sciences. We firstly need to distinguish between theoretical comparison (which is what most people think social science is, and has little use), and actual empirical research.

Indeed, the social sciences are subjective, and are therefore much harder to interpret and draw logical conclusions from. They can also be ideologically biased.
Nonetheless, social scientific research has a major impact on government policy alongside business decision-making (market research), and can thus be seen as equally important.

To be able to improve society, we have to understand society. This cannot be achieved through the natural sciences.

It's not about the value of social science but about the problem of getting objective truths from social science datasets.

It is a bit useless to improve society with a tool whose efficiency is under question. Stuff like being able to prove contradictory statements in a dataset is no minor issue or getting literally nonsensical papers in a peer reviewed journal is no minor issue.

The issue is that if something is not subjective, you cannot infer generalisable truths from it and if you want to apply truths to society like natural sciences do, you need generalisable truths.
Social science does not have that much of an impact in business but statistics do. See the revolution of big data. You won't see any social scientist in it. Also, government policy is increasingly led by open data which is itself led by the younger generation of scientists, the data they want to access is numerical data, the type of methods they use are statistical. It is hard to see "social science" in it. So nope, natural sciences might not be able to understand society but big data and computer science (rather than social science) is there to help us do it.

Market research has a HUGE impact on business, combining both qualitative and quantitative methods.

What do you mean by "the revolution of big data"?
What do you mean by "open data"? I'm guessing you mean freely available data, but then how is this any more reliable than the apparently 'untruthful' social sciences?
Many social scientists, who actually have a proper impact, use a lot of statistics and maths, whilst supplementing it with qualitative methodology because statistics cannot, and do not, tell the complete truth - computers cannot do that.

Market research is not a social science. Keywords: business and market.
Big Data is the computation large datasets to infer truths about your customers among other things.
Open data is not freely available data. It is valuable data that is free. So your pics on imgur are not free data but info about something that is valuable to large groups of people is open data. The thing about open data is that if it is false, it will be quickly noticed for the same reason bugs as quickly noticed in open source software.
What do you mean by "proper impact"? As I said, social scientists seem to be very bad at stats and most social science courses don't do maths other that stats. Qualitative methodology is not scientific and does not really add anything of value for the general public. Not sure what you mean by "complete truth". Still, you have not said why social sciences are valuable.

Market research is not a social science. Keywords: business and market.
Big Data is the computation large datasets to infer truths about your customers among other things.
Open data is not freely available data. It is valuable data that is free. So your pics on imgur are not free data but info about something that is valuable to large groups of people is open data. The thing about open data is that if it is false, it will be quickly noticed for the same reason bugs as quickly noticed in open source software.
What do you mean by "proper impact"? As I said, social scientists seem to be very bad at stats and most social science courses don't do maths other that stats. Qualitative methodology is not scientific and does not really add anything of value for the general public. Not sure what you mean by "complete truth". Still, you have not said why social sciences are valuable.

Then I will do a media studies course at a RG uni and beat the hell out of non-RG grads for stem jobs or any other job I want.

Just gonna say I was under the impression that business and markets are economics related. In fact i don't see how they can not be.

I never said market research could be classified as a social science in itself. It utilizes research methodology from the social sciences, such as ethnography, surveys &c which collect data from people i.e society. I still don't quite get what you mean by 'open data', but I'm assuming it's something to do with variables such as profits or turnover in a company.

All that says is what is happening but not why it is happening . In market research, companies use a combination of methodologies to find out about their customers. Quant methods display cause-and-effect relationships between two variables e.g. one's ethnicity and their shopping habits. Whilst qunatitative data is reliable, it is not always valid. Thus, being combined with qualitative data uncovers the true meanings of the relationship between two social variables.

What you need to realise is that the general reputation of the social sciences is akin to theoretical hippie sociologists who cannot be arsed to study maths or statistics and thus spend their life lecturing students on bull**** and coming up with bull**** pseudo-scientific theories. In truth, a lot of people could be seen a 'social scientists' because they are using such methodology in order to draw conclusions about a particular social group by combining quantitative and qualitative methods.

This counts for market researchers, social researchers, policy makers and civil servants who use social scientific data in order to inform business making decisions and government policies. The PROBLEM, is that social scientists can, in many cases, manipulate their data according to their political/ ideological stance. However, there is no alternative to understanding the patterns and charactersitics within our society to either:
- Make it a better place by accordingly implementing policies (social research).
or
- Advise businesses on how to market their product to their customers (market research).

You will find that any Russell Group University thats worth anything won't offer a Media Studies degree. Some like Warwick do but there is a different Oxford and other Russells. Also, 1.there is a vast difference between a Theology degree from Oxford (hence I used it as an example) and a Theology degree from a Russell Group like Liverpool or even Leeds.

Also, I think you are giving the exception rather than the rule. Media Studies is pretty much Universally considered a useless degree so it would be difficult to gain traction even from a good University brand name.

Surveys ain't scientific and ethnography does not seem to be too different in that sense.
It is might opinion but seems that market research is soon gonna fade and big data is gonna be the golden standard. Of course, quant data is not always valid, that is why you need to know your measuring tools. I don't get what you mean by "true meaning". And qual has not proved itself useful. Maybe that is why it does not get as much money as quant does.

The main problem with social science is that it is ill-defined so anyone can come up and start a new social science. This does not help those want to adopt a more scientific approach to study aspects of society. Science and qual data is incompatible. Science wants predictions and objective truths and only quant data can provide that.

It does not seem that obvious that using social science is a reliable way to understanding society, because, social science is not reliable nor is it useful to generalise. So how can you use something unreliable to make policies? Nuts. That is why an increasing number of countries are turning to actual science to test their policies. See randomised controlled trial.

And as I said, market research is in decline. If you have money, big data is all the rage.

Summary: social science is subjective, most of it is unscientific and the scientific bits suffer from quality of stats.

If you are not using the scientific method to gain truths, you cannot really call yourself a science.

"The main problem with social science is that it is ill-defined so anyone can come up and start a new social science."
1.Same goes for natural science or any type of academic discipline.

"It does not seem that obvious that using social science is a reliable way to understanding society, because, social science is not reliable nor is it useful to generalise. So how can you use something unreliable to make policies? Nuts."
It depends entirely on the research methodology used, and to what extent the study is ideologically biased. Bias is a major weakness, yet 2.there are many surveys (e.g. Census) that have little if any bias. Bias or no bias, can you name any alternative way of finding out the makeup of our society today in order to know how efficiently key social institutions are functioning? Or, how to justify policy proposals?

"And as I said, market research is in decline. If you have money, big data is all the range."
Big data alone is not sufficient to show what is really happening. It needs to be supplemented by qualitative data. Whilst, the market research industry may change and evolve using new methodology, but it will not go away. http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/43895_Epilogue.pdf

"Summary: social science is subjective, most of it is unscientific and the scientific bits suffer from quality of stats.

If you are not using the scientific method to gain truths, you cannot really call yourself a science."
Agreed partly, although this depends on how you define science. If you google "define science", the main definition is as follows:

"The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."

If you are ultra-orthodox to this definition of science, which understandably many are, then yes, you are right. However, if you replace the words 'physical' and 'natural' with adjectives akin to social reality, then you basically define what (proper) social science is. However, other would argue the prefix 'social' clearly states that this is different from natural science, and is more subjective. Whilst natural science seeks to find laws, social science seeks to find patterns.

Ultimately, whether you wish to call it science or not is up to you. But like it or not, the academic community call it as such. One must accept that over time, language changes in its connotation. For example, the word 'gay' originally meant 'happy', but is now mainly associated with homosexuality.

In light of this notion of language change, perhaps the meaning of the word 'science' is changing from:

"The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."

to:

"The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."

It depends whether you think life is better without reason and logic or without wonder and imagination. (Although tbf, most sciences have a bit of both, analogy flaily waily)

1. I presume you have personally done both degrees to be able to compare them, right?

Of course I haven't completed both degrees but the majority of people would agree. There's a reason why it takes A*s to get into Oxford for Law and not for Liverpool. The applicant pool is of a higher quality and thus they are capable of undertaking a more rigorous course.

It's widely accepted that a degree at Oxbridge is much more intense and rigorous than a degree at a lot of other Universities in the UK. The difference is likely to be more noticeable between Oxford and Liverpool than say Oxford and UCL however.