is english literature a useless degree?

i wanna study english and ive always thought that it was a good degree because you can pretty much get any job (well not any but a lot) with it like there's so many career paths to choose from. i mean idk what iwanna do in the future but with english i could go into journalism like so many differet types of journalism, law, marketing, pr , commuication, novelist etc. But a lot of people say it's useless etc. But how... like ngl but some people dont ****ing know how to write even adults and you dont just learn hwo to write but like a 1000 other ****ing skill. But is it really useless?

Typically it leads into teaching jobs, it’s not very employable because it isn’t practical nor heavily skill-based.
You rarely, if at all, get any industry experience. The occasions that you do, most people go on to do a PGCE (essentially a teaching degree) and then teach primary or high school English.
Language is more employable than literature because from that many go into speech therapy, child language acquisition, care work or overseas translation (rarely though I might add). It’s often done as a degree that’s needed to be built upon by another degree to make it more employable - PGCE, Child studies, Language Therapy, Psychology, etc.
English literature is also the study of literature so whilst you pick up good analytical skills, essay writing, report writing and history understanding, it doesn’t offer the broad spectrum of skills other degrees do- data analysis, group research, statistical analysis, IT, data input, legal knowledge, application of policy and data, training in industry, public sector/third sector training/study, etc.

It's as useless any non-STEM, non vocational/professional (i.e. Law, Engineering, Quantity Surveying, Medicine, etc, etc) degree - outside of these areas degrees are really what you make of them.

Just as with History, Politics, any number of social sciences or humanities degrees, and in reality virtually any business related course at the undergraduate level, the preparation it provides is not disciplinary but in terms of transferable skills. The underlying research, writing, communication (written and oral) skills are the attraction, as far as employers are concerned. Whether you are able to convincingly present this as the case in an interview is somewhat on you.

Do bear in mind as mentioned above, there is less in the data analysis/quantitative research methods realm than other subjects here, outside of more linguistics oriented options taken in a degree or if you do some dissertation in something relating to e.g. librarianship which uses a lot of data normally. Universities seem increasingly to be including "professional skills" type modules to try and develop this in humanities and social science courses where it is less evident though. Additionally there is usually more scope to take optional modules within humanities degrees including English where you could ameliorate this (and if you highlight how you developed and can apply these skills in an interview that will probably help you, at least relative to other Literature grads).

You can go into any number of generic business/related grad schemes (or e.g. the Civil Service) from an English degree - the main important thing being where you get the degree, rather than what in. You would certainly struggle somewhat more finding a role with an English degree from e.g. Portsmouth, than from Oxford (or perhaps in the less extreme, KCL or similar). Conversely though someone with a good engineering degree from Pompey could probably find a reasonable regional role to move into, so it does't necessarily go both ways.

Anyway as above you probably won't do anything directly related to the degree after graduating outside of teaching - you can stay in academia, but in the "arts" (i.e. essay subjects) this is considerably harder to do/more competitive than in other areas (also realistically, still involves teaching - just slightly older, although not necessarily better behaved, students). Probably the closest other area where you might use the subject background would be in librarianship.

Personally I’d take this comment with a pinch of salt.
BA degrees or social sciences are not inherently useless and if anything are more like to prove better academia terminology and grammatical accuracy/range than STEM (my sibling did chemical engineering finishing with a first yet does not have as competent skills as I do writing reports, inquiries, scanning, using expressive more verbose language, cultivating answers to intrinsic interview questions, etc - and my degree is a social science).
Unless you are applying to jobs where Maths, scientific knowledge or a specific degree (like medicine) are essentially required to do the job, then realistically you can use any skills you’ve acquired anywhere alongside your degree to aid an application to a job.
For example, civil service graduate schemes nearly always ask for proficiency in higher-academic level report preparation - something in likely more proficient at because my coursework was my heavily based around this area.
However I would urge people doing BAs/social sciences to acquire additional skills to boost an application/CV - learning to code, becoming more proficient in Microsoft Applications, usage of SAP, HTMLs, data input/statistical analysis. There are free courses you can do online to help this

You seem to have either misinterpreted my comment. At no point did I intend to suggest STEM degrees were better for "generalist" roles; they are just the same for that, however going into detail on how they may be "less useless" overall was beyond the scope of this thread as it pertains to the nature of the specialist roles which STEM graduates can apply to that arts students cannot. The bulk of my commentary was, in line with this thread's focus, regarding "arts" subjects only and the roles they can collectively apply to, and noting that the intersection of the set of roles an English grad and a grad in any other "arts" role can apply to is in fact the union of those two sets...

You seem to have either misinterpreted my comment. At no point did I intend to suggest STEM degrees were better for "generalist" roles; they are just the same for that, however going into detail on how they may be "less useless" overall was beyond the scope of this thread as it pertains to the nature of the specialist roles which STEM graduates can apply to that arts students cannot. The bulk of my commentary was, in line with this thread's focus, regarding "arts" subjects only and the roles they can collectively apply to, and noting that the intersection of the set of roles an English grad and a grad in any other "arts" role can apply to is in fact the union of those two sets...

People like you really annoy me lol. "It's as useless any non-STEM, non vocational/professional (i.e. Law, Engineering, Quantity Surveying, Medicine, etc, etc) degree". First off, specialist degrees are obviously better for their fields;

Look at the first line of your original comment...

Look at literally every other line of the comment which discusses exclusively the other topics.

This thread is not about "STEM vs arts" no matter how much either of you want it to be, and no amount of pigheaded hyperfixation on a single comment (which was clearly a parody of the title of the thread, and as English students or those interested in the area it is extremely concerning you're not even able to pick up on the repetition of the OP's language used to introduce my comment) is going to change either that. Go derail another thread, or if you're so insistent on flogging this dead horse, make your own thread on the matter.

Really? That comment alone just screams how triggered you are by this topic alone. You did not say anything parody or with fun (as much as you say it was just a comment), if you truly had any brain cells you would know that this is an online forum, therefore how you write and what you state has permanency - we cannot read minds and your first comment initially stated that they are “useless” which is a direct quote.
Stop being such a sour immature person and grow up. I was being so polite towards your initial comment considering how blunt and direct you were being over something subjective. Now look at you - I suggest you remove yourself from forums before you burst a blood vessel from several people disagreeing with you. Jesus Christ..

Read the thread title. Read it again. Read it again a third time and write down the thread title, underline and/or highlight the word "useless" in it, then cross reference this with my comment. Maybe you will see the connection now that I've spelled it out for you.

Also "triggered" is a term referring to how someone suffering from trauma can be affected by things seemingly removed from that trauma. It's not a buzzword to throw around in internet arguments, and even if fit were it immediately demonstrates you have lost any such argument as you have no further valid points to provide.

I have no further comments with regard to you as you've derailed this thread far enough in your absurd crusade against nothing.

Typically it leads into teaching jobs, it’s not very employable because it isn’t practical nor heavily skill-based.
You rarely, if at all, get any industry experience. The occasions that you do, most people go on to do a PGCE (essentially a teaching degree) and then teach primary or high school English.
Language is more employable than literature because from that many go into speech therapy, child language acquisition, care work or overseas translation (rarely though I might add). It’s often done as a degree that’s needed to be built upon by another degree to make it more employable - PGCE, Child studies, Language Therapy, Psychology, etc.
English literature is also the study of literature so whilst you pick up good analytical skills, essay writing, report writing and history understanding, it doesn’t offer the broad spectrum of skills other degrees do- data analysis, group research, statistical analysis, IT, data input, legal knowledge, application of policy and data, training in industry, public sector/third sector training/study, etc.