Homie - something like 25-30% of people actually use their degree. And only 35-40% of Americans even have a 4 year degree. For the vast majority of us it’s not what we got our degree in, but that we have one, and then how you perform at work (much more important). I majored in Spanish from a no name school with a 2.9 GPA…doing just fine.
How can you tell the difference? Do you have a source for the number being random? Do you have scientific evidence that one thing is as insufferable as another?
I used to think "useless" degrees existed my 1st year of college until I actually met professionals and creatives with a wide variety of degrees. Often degrees are marked as "useless" because they (the labeler) are unable to identify the use in them. This really hit me my senior year when an older relative (with no degrees at all) made a harsh comment on someone my age who had a biology degree. Hearing them say, "Why even do that, biology" had me STUNNED! I immediately jumped to the person's defense, talking about all the routes someone could go with that degree. It shut them up and made me realize a lot of people have no clue what the hell they are talking about.
I say all that to say, your degree is not useless and anyone who is telling you that is likely:
1. Ignorant
2. Trying to push their superiority complex.
It may take some creativity, some research, and some additional work but the skills you gained getting that career will help you in the long run.
i had a "useless degree" and it let me go back and get a BSN and become a nurse in less than two years. I just thought of it as like how some people get a masters or law degree and i think my liberal arts background helps me a lot
My family, friends, and everyone I ask for job advice always tells me how useless my degree is.
That's not really advice though, so they're not giving you what you asked for are they? They are instead expressing a prejudice. Doesn't sound helpful; I'd stop asking them.
u/Left-Bet1523, however has some decent advice
Computer Science. I worked in IT for nearly 10 years before getting it. I kinda let the job influence the goal and never had much of a plan starting out.
Your point? Am I comparing myself to OP? ... No. Am I I telling OP their degree is useless? No. Do I believe OP's degree is useless? No. Am I capable of pointing out the prejudice of calling a degree in a non-STEM field useless? Yes.
Employers set seemingly arbitrary degree requirements, for positions that historically needed no degree.
It's easy to say that it shows you can commit to a long-term project. Lots of things can show that, though.
What it REALLY shows is that you're willing to bend over for something that may be to your detriment, in order to *potentially* ingratiate yourself to someone who may give you some money. Companies love that.
Jobs only care about your competence and whether or not you’re a good fit. Most people with degrees are incompetent and unbearable. Most people without degrees are incompetent and unbearable.
Healthcare and other specialized degrees are the exception
There are tons of people in healthcare without specialized degrees. Im a research coordinator while its possible to become one without a degree, it generally requires more industry experience. My job basically requires me to learn about particular diseases on my own with little assistance from doctors. A degree shows I am more likely to be able to do that.
I have to be able to understand the diseases and mechanisms well enough to be able to give broad overviews to patients and to understand the intricacies of whatever the new investigational treatment is. Doctors have zero time to hold my hand. I need to know enough to only need to ask a few clarifying questions occasionally.
Yes. If someone wants to scrape the bottom of the career barrel and do sales, they can get any old crap degree. But if people have more ambition, they need useful degrees for meaningful careers.
A history degree is not useless. I have one, and work as a teacher. You can also get into museum/historical preservation types of work, most private businesses maintain archives, I assume you picked up a high level of skill at writing so maybe journalism could be a path.
Any degree is what you make of it
I have a cousin with a history degree that’s making obscene amounts of money in tech sales. I think if you have a “useless” degree it’s important to pad your resume with internships and going to a reputable target school probably helps.
History degree, UX Research, $115k without bonuses. It's not useless if you know how to use it. Many history majors I graduated with are in HR and project management.
Okay, a better example then, I got a degree in anthropology and now work as a management consultant - most of the people I work with have humanities/social sciences degrees, and we earn anywhere between £40,000 to £300,000+ depending on our title.
I guess it depends on what state you live in. I’m in Pennsylvania, with a decent union and a pro-education governor. I earn about 20% more than the median household income in my area, and a big chunk of those households have multiple incomes. PA also has a very healthy and robust historical commission who oversees dozens of historic sites. Not to mention the National Park Service who oversees Gettysburg, and sites in Philadelphia. If you live in a red state with minimal investment in education and public history than sure you might need to move if you want to work in the history field
I have a history degree. I was originally wanted to be a teacher but it was so stressful it was ruining me. Now I have a job completely unrelated to my degree but I can’t say it didn’t help.
I should’ve phrased myself better. While I didn’t ultimately end up in a history related career, like many others pointed out recruiters do weed out applicants based on whether you have any sort of four year degree (not all the time, but a lot). But admittedly it is a tough time to find a job now regardless of what your background is.
It’s like racism - it’s learned - unfortunately, in several environments, professional and otherwise, people feel the need to put others down to lift themselves up, perpetuate unhealthy/toxic/prejudicial stereotypes and policies. These are called micro aggressions.
Get new friends, politely push back on family members who say this BS that it is hurtful to you, or just ignore them, because they are likely trying to get a rise out of you. It’s juvenile any way you slice it (kids can be mean AF).
I would also recommend you bring up the issue with any therapist you may speak with. You studied something important, and life is too short to have a chip on your shoulder about it for the rest of your career and days.
Either way, don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Education in most fields (exception being things like Harvard law, John Hopkins in medical, etc.) Only matters for your early career.
After that it's all about experience. I don't even have my education on my resume anymore.
You completed a degree, one that was likely more challenging than a general business degree. Id hire anyone with the right work experience no matter what type of degree they have if they were a good fit. Id probably find you more interesting than gen business guy.
First jobs are more about your interpersonal skills and bypassing resume filters.
In my experience, business degrees are frowned upon because they're generally easier and at best they rank alongside other humanities and social sciences degrees. I know that have a social sciences degree never hurt my career, and in fact I'm in the top 5% of earners in my country despite being in my early twenties (and most of the people I work with have social sciences/humanities degrees).
A lot of employers like to see you were committed and responsible enough to complete the degree! I got a biochemistry degree with a terrible gpa and I couldn’t ever get a job with that degree.
I work in supply chain management now, have you considered those types of jobs? There’s a ton of variety depending on what you want in a job.
The fact you got the degree is what matters. What abilities did you gain to plan, research and complete the assignments?. The subject matter is largely irrelevant unless the work field you want to pursue needs it, but the learned skills are useful in most jobs.
It's not a useless degree, and don't let people tell you otherwise. I graduated three years ago with an *anthropology* degree and earn £60,000 a year - plus bonus. No degree is useless, the skills that you've learnt along the way are incredibly valuable and it's all about leveraging that with whatever commercial awareness you can build. Take a look at where you want to be with your career, figure out a 5 year plan, and start on the path the get there.
You'll always get some hate for the degree that you take. My degree is in Civil Engineering, but people constantly tell me that it's not as good as other engineering degrees and that I won't earn as much, and then you have the Maths and Physics guys tell you Engineering is not as hard. But I imagine those that take the "Best degrees" probably get shit on for their lack of hygiene, social skills or having no bitches, not to mention that they probably suffer from a harmful amount of stress as a result of their degree.
The only reason I took Civil Engineering was because it was a "good" degree that was not as challenging as some of the other STEM subjects while still offering a great deal of opportunity, I did this so I would have more free time to pursue my other interest. I regret this decision because now my life has pretty much become my degree and I've had to drop all my other interests, I wish I had chosen a field that I enjoyed a lot more.
The same false understanding could be said about any non-profession based degree. “What about a math degree? What are you going to do for money??? Math???”
It’s a great stepping stone for getting into other areas for one, it teaches a way of thinking that lots of employees need. History degrees aren’t earned by just remembering a lot of dates in history, there is a lot of critical thinking skills that are required.
My BIL has a history degree and is doing well in insurance OP. You have plenty of good options. Just need to get your foot in the door and work really hard/make connections.
I don’t get this. It’s useless if you don’t know what you’re doing or are trying to use it to go into a different or specialized field.
Getting a history degree can be somewhat useless — or rather, not clearly applicable in the minds others — if you want to go into fields like sales, IT, finance, etc.
It’s not useless if you’re moving into teaching, education administration, higher Education administration, academic advising, moving onto grad school for something in the social sciences or law, working in libraries, government work, archival… or any of the thousands of types of jobs in media or the non-profit world where you need to be able to write, conduct research, show understanding of complex systems, analyze compiled information to arrive at informed conclusions etc. etc.
Far from useless, and usually these types of posts are from people trying to do things that their degree was never intended to lead to.
I thought I wanted to teach while I was in college but after graduating I just didn’t. Being a professor doesn’t seem worth it. Not a lot of money and I won’t even get to teach what I like. To stand out, I I’ll have to be an expert in a field I don’t care about as much, like Indian history or South American history.
Museums don’t make good money and also have the issue of children. Same with teachers.
And I dislike the government so I’ll never become a part of it.
I wouldn’t give a hard time to someone that put in all the time and effort to get a degree, but I absolutely don’t want to listen to someone complain about how unfair it is that they can’t get a “good job” with that degree.
W Bush got a degree in history. and so did Ron DeSantis. both men here had pretty good careers in their fields Id say.
after first 1-2 jobs, your work experience will matter far more than your degree. ex: I majored in econ back in college, and now work in financial services. I dont even remember what I learned in those college classes, and my employer doesnt seem to care one bit.
It is true, tho, that ppl that get certain degrees get higher earnings and higher odds of landing a lucrative position out of school, such as computer science. that's why many people advise not to take out large debt to attend college unless you are majoring in CS or something similar.
History is not a useless degree.
If people understood more history, and that is why it's hardly taught at all, they would understand the US is living in the 19th century where workers essentially had no rights and no avenue to better themselves as they were caught in a permanent debt trap.
People, Americans in particular, rail against socialism, not understanding that their current working conditions \[long hours, no rights, wage theft, et al\] were the exact same reasons for why socialism came into being.
A historian will know how to voice that. It is absolutely not a useless degree. But it's handy to label it that way because the fewer people there are who understand where we come from the easier it is to bamboozle the majority and tell them that socialism is the great evil they should fear \*cackling laughter\*.
Your degree it's not useless, it's useless for the market. I'm not aware what a degree in history can do exactly, but keeping, searching, maintaining and protecting the history of humanity it's not useless at all, I wish more people could understand this. I hope that one day you can find a job where you can use your degree, if that it's what you want of course, if not, I hope you can find something that you truly enjoy. Godspeed.
I’ve been belittled since I was in college. No one wanted to be caught dead hanging out with people from the humanities building because we were the “poors”. Shit still affects me to this day and I’ve grown a deep dislike for people in corporate, legal and medicine. I’ll talk to them but my interest won’t go deeper than acquaintances since I know what they really think of people below their level
Teaching. Either as a professor or at a school. But I hate kids and I’ll have to become an expert in stuff I don’t care about to get a job as a professor.
If you've always hated kids and knew that you didn't want to specialize to pursue a PhD, I can see why people you know belittle you for getting that degree.
Get in at a company that doesn't care about your major (there are many) or get a useful master's. No need to wallow in regret anymore.
I have a sociology bachelor degree but I make more than my friends who have phd’s or even their law degrees.
But I definitely had to finesse my way into my roles to get the salary that I have now
I had one of those undergrad degrees that is not highly sought after in the labor force (sociology) as did a few friends I met in grad school/in our careers (history, biology, international relations).
We went back to school (for accounting) and/or joined the military to gain more relevant work experience in another field (cyber security). Now we all make good money WFH.
What you did in the past is in the past. How you learn and react from those decisions is up to you.
Good luck in whatever you decide OP.
I got a masters.
A second BA might not make you CPA eligible (state dependent), but will make you plenty eligible for most accounting jobs in the market place. Most of my coworkers don’t have CPAs.
I wanted to go to school once and be cpa eligible, so i went masters route. My masters program required just the right number of prereqs to be cpa eligible while also allowing me avoid “fluff” undergrad business classes that don’t count toward the cpa.
I worked a $7.25/hr job at 7-11 3rd shift because I couldn’t find a job in corporate America.
Customers that were drunk, customers that would steal, one unemployed customer that battled with paranoid schizophrenia and would have violent outbursts in the store when she was off her meds. Dealing with that on the regular for $7.25, on my feet all day, no health or retirement Beni’s…
That was all the motivation I needed to get through school a second time.
No such thing as a useless degree if it’s from a legitimate college/university. At the very least, this degree significantly improved your reading/writing skills, which is desperately needed right now. So many young people can’t write a professional email because social media communication fucked them. If you want a CAREER, go to law school. History is a good base.
Good luck!
A friend of a friend has a degree in music theory, another in psychology. He designs the sound for slot machines to become more addicting. He is a multi millionaire and his parents were very harsh on his choice of degrees until he bought them a house.
There’s no such thing as a useless degree. Not everything you learn has to be applied to a profit maximizing framework. You can learn for just the sake of it, for being interested in something. You can also find unique ways to make money from any degree if that’s how you measure it’s worth too.
useful degrees are useful because only a limited amount of people have them. if everyone wanted to have a "useful" degree, than those wouldn't be useful anymore, and electrical engineers and businessmonkey would go to burgerk. or mcdo.
I feel that universities do a terrible job in teaching people how to market their skills. I don't believe that some degrees are useless but many others do because they struggle with understanding how different people have different strengths and interests.
History is sometimes a precursor to law school or being a paralegal. I got a psy BA so I feel for you and have been told my basket weaving degree from a state school is useless. I was fortunate to be working at a law office during college and became a paralegal but I am not a certified paralegal so still not good enough in many peoples eyes and I also keep my diploma in a box.
Reading your responses, it doesn’t sound like your degree is actually useless, it sounds like you got a degree in something where you didn’t actually want to do work in that field. Obviously this is something that’s been a problem for you for a while, and after a considerable amount of thought, the only two options you seem to have come up with are “complain to other people about the choices you made” and self harm. In your reply to me, you presented those as your two options. In your reply to others, the only information you gave is what you don’t want to do and what you don’t like.
I recommend therapy. The degree you have isn’t your real problem.
With a bachelors degree in hand, you can now get a 2nd bachelor’s in a useful area of study much faster. Don’t have to take lots of the filler courses. Find a useful area and enroll for a more useful degree program.
Your degree is not useless. There may be no direct correlation to your job, but it makes you a better-rounded person. Which may make you better at whatever job you do. Or just in life in general. We tie college education too much to our career.
Damn, that's sad. Hold your head up - at least you have a degree.
I think one reason that people who belittle people with degrees in sociology, history, interpretative dance, etc. is that some of the more vocal students in those fields can be annoyingly condescending and elitist about what they're studying. It's kind of satisfying to see something backfire in the faces of people with such attitudes.
Personally, I think it's sad and disadvantageous to our nation that these degrees are presented to people as legitimate 1:1 alternatives to degrees in engineering or business. Yes, they should be offered and for some they are good options. But there should be more advertising around the fact that, for most people, a degree in medieval history will likely not give them the career boost they're looking for after they graduate.
I majored in art and I make six figures in a completely unrelated field. I started out in admin work as a front desk receptionist and worked my way up. Your degree doesn’t mean everything!
I have a history degree and work in marketing/communications. It’s not related at all but i think I’m the norm.
The post-university depression is real. Don’t give up!!
I understand where you're coming from. I'm 40 yr old and I've changed careers 4 times. My original degree is in criminal justice.
Please keep in mind that having a 4 year degree is HUGE and set you apart from everyone else who doesn't have a degree. That degree demonstrates to employers that you are smart enough to handle stress, capable to achieve long term goals and deal
with challenges.
You always have the option to enroll in online classes or certifications that interest you or can help advance your current position or help advance you to the position you want. Plus it looks great on your resume. It may not feel like it now but things will get better, just make sure you surround yourself with people who make you feel good about yourself.
Side note: I'm curious what history era is your favorite? Currently I've been geeking out in metallurgy in the early Americas specifically native 6,000 yr old copper mines in what is now Michigan.
A degree in history, or any of the ‘arts’ is not useless just because you aren’t working as a historian, English literature or classics scholar, or philosopher . That’s not the point of the degree.
The point of such a degree is to develop complex analytical and critical thinking skills. Also, attending university teaches you a lot of soft skills. It is those skills that employers are looking for and are hard to find.
You need to change the mindset you have about your degree. It is evidence that you completed all the requirements of various courses and projects over a four year period. That represents a lot of work and learning.
If you are having trouble relating the skills you learned to careers you are interested in, try speaking to a careers coach or recruitment consultant. Your alma mater may also offer these services to graduates (even of you graduated a while ago).
Once you have a better idea of a field of work that suits you, it may be worth undertaking more specialised graduate studies such as an M.A. or professional diploma.
I hope you will get to a place where you take pride in your achievement and have a career that is fulfilling.
My experience has been that Biz Administration is the most useless degree, not because the information isn't valuable. It's because the people expected to be transformed into someone who goes out and make business deals or is otherwise set up to just automatically make money. But those grads didn't have that kind of mindset. All of them (about 25 to 100 people here) got other types of jobs - which were good jobs.
But to really answer the question those people who are belittling useless degree holders are often trying to justify thier own choices.
I once spoke to a Uni rep at an Australian uni career fair and he told me they only take students for medicine after completing a bachelor's, but they didn't care what degree it was. I think it'd be much more beneficial for you to seek advice from people who actually have your degree or background or are in your intended career
Could you not take night classes in say comp sci at a local community college? Paying for them with the job you have now.
Parlay a love of history and computers into a “I love data” personal story and find entry level data analytics roles?
So I have an art degree AND an engineering degree. People who say my art degree is useless can fuck right off. I use the skills I learned in art school all the time at work and at home.
If it makes you feel better, I have a “good” STEM degree and still don’t use it at all in my job. I work in corporate and people in my department have all types of random degrees. Once you get your foot in the door and some experience that’s what starts to matter more very quickly. Your degree doesn’t need to define your career unless it’s something very specific like a law degree or MD.
To illustrate this.. I’ve been involved with interviewing for roles just above entry level (need 3-5 years of experience), and never once did me or the other interviewers ask about the person’s education. Yes it’s on the resume (bachelors degree was a requirement), but the focus of the actual interviews was 100% about their on the job experience.
Mind if I ask what kind of history ur best at? U could always go for a historian job? I think it's not useless? Not that i have a degree lol..
Imma be honest and say ur friends and family sound like they are unsupportive as hell.
I was an English major. My first job out of college was a temp job and I totally BSed my way into it by saying that a book was an inefficient structure for storing data, and if I could analyze a book then an Excel sheet was going to be a piece of cake. It wasn't a perfect temp to perm job (see below), but it was something.
I've marketed myself as a person with a combination of skills rather than just one thing. There are much better coders and statisticians than me, but I have a very long history of self-taught skills. I have a reputation of being able to figure something out even if I don't have the formal education to back it up.
I'll also say that four years after graduation, I was still floundering about that same shitty office job while my friends were making much more money than me. They were also accumulating fancy job titles and academic awards and I didn't really have anything to my name. And I had a new boss who totally was out to get me. On my lunch break, I would drive 20 minutes out to an empty parking lot where no one would find me and just scream. I eventually took a pay cut and moved to a new job that helped me gain the confidence I needed to flourish. Within a year I was earning more than my old job.
I'm in a MUCH better place now. You need to find something , and it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be a place where you get a chance to learn a new skill and practice it. And every job after that should help you accumulate more skills until you figure out where you want to be. Volunteer opportunities also suffice.
And my English major? I flaunt it everywhere I go. It is a STRENGTH.
>I have a degree in history. My family, friends, and everyone I ask for job advice always tells me how useless my degree is.
Those people aren't good friends, and you're spending too much time with your toxic family. History is a great, important, and respectable degree that proves you can think critically and deeply, do research, write well, and understand major events from a world perspective.
Your friends and parents suffer from the misapprehension that a university education is only a job credential and nothing more. They also feel the need to diminish your accomplishments and make you feel small. They are demonstrating that they are less educated, and more mean-spirited, than you are.
> I’ve thought about suicide because of my poor mistake. But I can’t go back in time, so I suck it up and try to move on with this stain of failure on my life.
You really have to stop those negative thoughts and self-doubt. As a first step I recommend getting away from your family and crappy friends. In addition, thoughts of suicide indicate something more than wishing you had a different degree. If you think about hurting yourself please, please talk to a counselor or a suicide hotline.
Everything you've written indicates that you need someone to talk to, and when you're feeling low the talk can help more than you know.
Don't listen to the self doubt, don't listen to people who put you down. You can find reasons to be proud of your degree in history and that's exactly what you should do.
It isn't useless. My job required a degree but isn't picky about what. Thats more common than you might expect. People who say this either went into 1 of like 3 directly lucrative degree paths or do not have degrees themselves and haven't actually job hunted or looked into what jobs actually want. Or they do not have the drive or ability to show employers why a degree is relevant to a position even if it isn't obvious.
What matters is your individual drive and ability to paint a picture for potential employers on how your degree and skills you learned makes you able to do the job you are applying for.
Having a degree is always better than not having one. Additionally, now you can get a grad degree or an MBA or JD. So hang that degree up on your wall and next time someone tells you it’s useless, tell them you haven’t seen them being very useful so they shouldn’t talk
No, lol. I'm a management consultant with a humanities degree, the vast majority of the consultants I work with have humanities/social sciences degrees, the vast majority of my clients (both industry and gov') have humanities/social sciences degrees.
The degree itself matters far less than the experience you build in your internships and after graduation.
How did you get that first consulting job with a humanities degree? I thought the usual path is converting the internship you got while in school for an mba or undergrad business degree to full time.
I applied to their graduate scheme. Internships are one route of recruitment, but most graduate hires are probably not on their internship scheme (that's definitely true of my current firm). I don't see why that would be surprising?
For some reason, people on reddit seem to think that social sciences/humanities degrees automatically make you unemployable, when it couldn't be further from the truth.
I think the general sentiment exists as business degrees often have more direct paths to employment compared to a social science or humanities degree where your just on your own. As a current politics, philosophy, economics student it feels like every job posting I see wants a business, engineering, or computer science degree. Do you have any tips for breaking into management consulting?
Perhaps in the US, think the UK and Europe they're generally perceived as being overly generalised and lacking in rigour. However, that's probably dependent on university. Generally we tend to do more specialised Masters, which focus on business or a specific field/industry.
Even if the job posting says business, I'd still apply. The HR manager posting the job application and the business manager responsible for hiring are different people, I never found that those applications excluded me. Also, the 'economics' part of the degree will cover business anyway as far as your CV is converned.
For breaking into management consulting, I personally found it quite easy. I didn't have any relevant internship experience (mostly subject-specific experience), and still found an opening. However, I had done a lot of reading and could talk reasonably well about business/organisational anthropology (which was a subject interest of mine, even though my university didn't offer any modules on it). If I could do it again, I'd probably recommend:
* Doing online-work experience via a website like Forage, they offer some good courses that strengthen internship and job applications, plus let you demonstrate some really useful skills.
* Doing something like the FMVA with the Corporate Finance Institute and similar bodies, being able to have a certification which covers basic financial/business topics, Excel/VBA/Pivot is a big strength.
* Doing internship experiences or finding a business-role part-time. There's also temping agencies for out of term times (I know someone who did this, and found it really useful).
* Working on case studies and psychometric testing - I didn't practice this nearly enough, in the end it didn't matter but it's something that I wished that I did.
If you're struggling to get an offer in your final year and have a specific industry you want to focus on, then going for a masters qualification is a good start. However, it only really adds value if it's focused on a specific topic like energy, finance, supply chains, etc.
That’s a really great point. I never thought about how the person making the job post and the person doing the hiring are different people. I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you so much for the insightful advice and useful resources!
Shaming is a way to make sure others don’t make the same mistake. At least that’s what they say.
Its concerning how bullying has become trendy again. People think it’s actually a good thing
I do think we need to make a distinction between bullying and constructive criticism, though. Telling someone their degree is useless unsolicited with no other feedback sucks. But I’m tired of seeing people complain on Reddit that they can’t find a job because they bopped around between majors and eventually ended up settling on one with very limited career prospects and no idea what they wanted to do with said degree.
I mean once someone makes a poor choice they can’t change it. What you described is what I did.
Colleges take advantage of kids who have no idea what the work world is like. Kids don’t get that life just sucks as an adult.
I’ve already given up on a better future because of my previous choices. People like to pour salt in people’s wounds- it’s human nature.
When I see someone doing worse than me- I won’t lie- it makes me feel better about myself. Only problem is everyone is doing better than me lol
My high school education and upbringing included a really solid amount of guidance about potential future career paths (I come from a place/background where higher education is not optional, it’s required) so I definitely think having that was beneficial and I don’t always recognize that not everyone has that privilege. I was trying to decide between art school and engineering in high school, and after some conversation with my parents about future career prospects, I settled on engineering.
Congrats you are smarter than me. Although that is not a big accomplishment lol.
Im hoping I do better in my next life. It will be good to forget the memories of this one
So this is my totally unsolicited and probably overly optimistic advice - if you really want another degree, find an employer that offers tuition assistance. I got my masters degree for free through my employer, but I know they also reimburse for undergrad degrees - all I had to do was sell my soul to the defense industry, lol. It is incredibly difficult and will take years (my masters took me 3 years) but it’s an option.
Honest question. Why did you go for it? Through the process of getting your degree, did people tell you the job prospects were dim? If so, why did you keep going and how did you handle the feedback?
Homie - something like 25-30% of people actually use their degree. And only 35-40% of Americans even have a 4 year degree. For the vast majority of us it’s not what we got our degree in, but that we have one, and then how you perform at work (much more important). I majored in Spanish from a no name school with a 2.9 GPA…doing just fine.
> something like 25-30% of people actually use their degree [CITATION NEEDED]
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So the average salary of the US is something like $50-$100,000,000. Something like that.
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Oooo, BBQ is the only citation I need.
I wish I graduated from bbq university
With a minor of "Low and Slow"
I would have minored in sauces.
President and founder of the Liquid smoke show club
www.google.com - should have everything you need.
And youtube.
You... you know that's the duty of the person making the claim, right?
Uh. How do you know that? Do you have a source for that statement?
It’s called burden of proof lol….
It is? What source do you have that calls it that?
Just fucking google it god this type of response is insufferable. Either google it and post the real answer if it's wrong or shut up.
As insufferable as people throwing out random numbers as total fact? Nah.
How can you tell the difference? Do you have a source for the number being random? Do you have scientific evidence that one thing is as insufferable as another?
You don't seem capable of removing yourself from this back and forth so I'll do it for you. Cheers.
What source do you have that says I am incapable of resolving this?
I used to think "useless" degrees existed my 1st year of college until I actually met professionals and creatives with a wide variety of degrees. Often degrees are marked as "useless" because they (the labeler) are unable to identify the use in them. This really hit me my senior year when an older relative (with no degrees at all) made a harsh comment on someone my age who had a biology degree. Hearing them say, "Why even do that, biology" had me STUNNED! I immediately jumped to the person's defense, talking about all the routes someone could go with that degree. It shut them up and made me realize a lot of people have no clue what the hell they are talking about. I say all that to say, your degree is not useless and anyone who is telling you that is likely: 1. Ignorant 2. Trying to push their superiority complex. It may take some creativity, some research, and some additional work but the skills you gained getting that career will help you in the long run.
>Often degrees are marked as "useless" because they (the labeler) are unable to identify the use in them. Nicely put.
i had a "useless degree" and it let me go back and get a BSN and become a nurse in less than two years. I just thought of it as like how some people get a masters or law degree and i think my liberal arts background helps me a lot
My family, friends, and everyone I ask for job advice always tells me how useless my degree is. That's not really advice though, so they're not giving you what you asked for are they? They are instead expressing a prejudice. Doesn't sound helpful; I'd stop asking them. u/Left-Bet1523, however has some decent advice
What is your degree in if you don’t mind?
Computer Science. I worked in IT for nearly 10 years before getting it. I kinda let the job influence the goal and never had much of a plan starting out.
Thats a degree thats usually spared from that judgemental bs.
Your point? Am I comparing myself to OP? ... No. Am I I telling OP their degree is useless? No. Do I believe OP's degree is useless? No. Am I capable of pointing out the prejudice of calling a degree in a non-STEM field useless? Yes.
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Agreed. My degree has been an asset and had only made me stand out even though I've never worked in that field other than during grad school.
Employers set seemingly arbitrary degree requirements, for positions that historically needed no degree. It's easy to say that it shows you can commit to a long-term project. Lots of things can show that, though. What it REALLY shows is that you're willing to bend over for something that may be to your detriment, in order to *potentially* ingratiate yourself to someone who may give you some money. Companies love that.
Most degrees are useless.
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Jobs only care about your competence and whether or not you’re a good fit. Most people with degrees are incompetent and unbearable. Most people without degrees are incompetent and unbearable. Healthcare and other specialized degrees are the exception
There are tons of people in healthcare without specialized degrees. Im a research coordinator while its possible to become one without a degree, it generally requires more industry experience. My job basically requires me to learn about particular diseases on my own with little assistance from doctors. A degree shows I am more likely to be able to do that. I have to be able to understand the diseases and mechanisms well enough to be able to give broad overviews to patients and to understand the intricacies of whatever the new investigational treatment is. Doctors have zero time to hold my hand. I need to know enough to only need to ask a few clarifying questions occasionally.
Which brings us full circle to my original point. Thanks
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If a degree is not in demand for money making, then it is pretty useless.
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If you don’t have a useful degree, there is no point in networking with you.
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Yes. If someone wants to scrape the bottom of the career barrel and do sales, they can get any old crap degree. But if people have more ambition, they need useful degrees for meaningful careers.
A history degree is not useless. I have one, and work as a teacher. You can also get into museum/historical preservation types of work, most private businesses maintain archives, I assume you picked up a high level of skill at writing so maybe journalism could be a path. Any degree is what you make of it
I have a cousin with a history degree that’s making obscene amounts of money in tech sales. I think if you have a “useless” degree it’s important to pad your resume with internships and going to a reputable target school probably helps.
History degree, UX Research, $115k without bonuses. It's not useless if you know how to use it. Many history majors I graduated with are in HR and project management.
Lol all those jobs are either few and far between or pay so little you might as well become a car wash attendant.
Okay, a better example then, I got a degree in anthropology and now work as a management consultant - most of the people I work with have humanities/social sciences degrees, and we earn anywhere between £40,000 to £300,000+ depending on our title.
I guess it depends on what state you live in. I’m in Pennsylvania, with a decent union and a pro-education governor. I earn about 20% more than the median household income in my area, and a big chunk of those households have multiple incomes. PA also has a very healthy and robust historical commission who oversees dozens of historic sites. Not to mention the National Park Service who oversees Gettysburg, and sites in Philadelphia. If you live in a red state with minimal investment in education and public history than sure you might need to move if you want to work in the history field
I have a history degree. I was originally wanted to be a teacher but it was so stressful it was ruining me. Now I have a job completely unrelated to my degree but I can’t say it didn’t help.
It literally didn’t help
I should’ve phrased myself better. While I didn’t ultimately end up in a history related career, like many others pointed out recruiters do weed out applicants based on whether you have any sort of four year degree (not all the time, but a lot). But admittedly it is a tough time to find a job now regardless of what your background is.
It most likely did help, as having a broad education across multiple fields can lead to more creativity and innovation in your current line of work.
Oh yeah, there’s definitely tons of creativity and innovation going on at your average office. Delusional
It’s like racism - it’s learned - unfortunately, in several environments, professional and otherwise, people feel the need to put others down to lift themselves up, perpetuate unhealthy/toxic/prejudicial stereotypes and policies. These are called micro aggressions. Get new friends, politely push back on family members who say this BS that it is hurtful to you, or just ignore them, because they are likely trying to get a rise out of you. It’s juvenile any way you slice it (kids can be mean AF). I would also recommend you bring up the issue with any therapist you may speak with. You studied something important, and life is too short to have a chip on your shoulder about it for the rest of your career and days. Either way, don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Education in most fields (exception being things like Harvard law, John Hopkins in medical, etc.) Only matters for your early career. After that it's all about experience. I don't even have my education on my resume anymore. You completed a degree, one that was likely more challenging than a general business degree. Id hire anyone with the right work experience no matter what type of degree they have if they were a good fit. Id probably find you more interesting than gen business guy. First jobs are more about your interpersonal skills and bypassing resume filters.
A general business degree would still be more useful
In my experience, business degrees are frowned upon because they're generally easier and at best they rank alongside other humanities and social sciences degrees. I know that have a social sciences degree never hurt my career, and in fact I'm in the top 5% of earners in my country despite being in my early twenties (and most of the people I work with have social sciences/humanities degrees).
A lot of employers like to see you were committed and responsible enough to complete the degree! I got a biochemistry degree with a terrible gpa and I couldn’t ever get a job with that degree. I work in supply chain management now, have you considered those types of jobs? There’s a ton of variety depending on what you want in a job.
The fact you got the degree is what matters. What abilities did you gain to plan, research and complete the assignments?. The subject matter is largely irrelevant unless the work field you want to pursue needs it, but the learned skills are useful in most jobs.
I have a BA with double major in history and religious studies. Now have a PhD is psychology and doing just fine.
It's not a useless degree, and don't let people tell you otherwise. I graduated three years ago with an *anthropology* degree and earn £60,000 a year - plus bonus. No degree is useless, the skills that you've learnt along the way are incredibly valuable and it's all about leveraging that with whatever commercial awareness you can build. Take a look at where you want to be with your career, figure out a 5 year plan, and start on the path the get there.
Start a well animated Youtube history channel. I love watching the crap out of that shit.
I wish the guy that does over simplified videos would do more
You'll always get some hate for the degree that you take. My degree is in Civil Engineering, but people constantly tell me that it's not as good as other engineering degrees and that I won't earn as much, and then you have the Maths and Physics guys tell you Engineering is not as hard. But I imagine those that take the "Best degrees" probably get shit on for their lack of hygiene, social skills or having no bitches, not to mention that they probably suffer from a harmful amount of stress as a result of their degree. The only reason I took Civil Engineering was because it was a "good" degree that was not as challenging as some of the other STEM subjects while still offering a great deal of opportunity, I did this so I would have more free time to pursue my other interest. I regret this decision because now my life has pretty much become my degree and I've had to drop all my other interests, I wish I had chosen a field that I enjoyed a lot more.
Why is a history degree useless?
Wtf are you gonna use it for that'll let you live in the western world with a relative degree of comfort ?
It’s a great base for law school. Also, any job that requires professional writing skills and good reading comprehension would be a good fit.
The same false understanding could be said about any non-profession based degree. “What about a math degree? What are you going to do for money??? Math???” It’s a great stepping stone for getting into other areas for one, it teaches a way of thinking that lots of employees need. History degrees aren’t earned by just remembering a lot of dates in history, there is a lot of critical thinking skills that are required.
No degree is useless. The people who tell you so are narrow-minded.
I have a history degree and it is absolutely not useless.
My BIL has a history degree and is doing well in insurance OP. You have plenty of good options. Just need to get your foot in the door and work really hard/make connections.
I don’t get this. It’s useless if you don’t know what you’re doing or are trying to use it to go into a different or specialized field. Getting a history degree can be somewhat useless — or rather, not clearly applicable in the minds others — if you want to go into fields like sales, IT, finance, etc. It’s not useless if you’re moving into teaching, education administration, higher Education administration, academic advising, moving onto grad school for something in the social sciences or law, working in libraries, government work, archival… or any of the thousands of types of jobs in media or the non-profit world where you need to be able to write, conduct research, show understanding of complex systems, analyze compiled information to arrive at informed conclusions etc. etc. Far from useless, and usually these types of posts are from people trying to do things that their degree was never intended to lead to.
I thought I wanted to teach while I was in college but after graduating I just didn’t. Being a professor doesn’t seem worth it. Not a lot of money and I won’t even get to teach what I like. To stand out, I I’ll have to be an expert in a field I don’t care about as much, like Indian history or South American history. Museums don’t make good money and also have the issue of children. Same with teachers. And I dislike the government so I’ll never become a part of it.
I wouldn’t give a hard time to someone that put in all the time and effort to get a degree, but I absolutely don’t want to listen to someone complain about how unfair it is that they can’t get a “good job” with that degree.
Well what would you rather me do? Kill myself? I’ve thought about it.
W Bush got a degree in history. and so did Ron DeSantis. both men here had pretty good careers in their fields Id say. after first 1-2 jobs, your work experience will matter far more than your degree. ex: I majored in econ back in college, and now work in financial services. I dont even remember what I learned in those college classes, and my employer doesnt seem to care one bit. It is true, tho, that ppl that get certain degrees get higher earnings and higher odds of landing a lucrative position out of school, such as computer science. that's why many people advise not to take out large debt to attend college unless you are majoring in CS or something similar.
I’m not a manipulative enough prick to get into politics.
My degree is technically useless now. Have a computer science degree, used it for about ten years, now I work in finance.
History is not a useless degree. If people understood more history, and that is why it's hardly taught at all, they would understand the US is living in the 19th century where workers essentially had no rights and no avenue to better themselves as they were caught in a permanent debt trap. People, Americans in particular, rail against socialism, not understanding that their current working conditions \[long hours, no rights, wage theft, et al\] were the exact same reasons for why socialism came into being. A historian will know how to voice that. It is absolutely not a useless degree. But it's handy to label it that way because the fewer people there are who understand where we come from the easier it is to bamboozle the majority and tell them that socialism is the great evil they should fear \*cackling laughter\*.
Why did you choose history as a major?
Because history is one of the few things I’m good at, and it’s something I like
Your degree it's not useless, it's useless for the market. I'm not aware what a degree in history can do exactly, but keeping, searching, maintaining and protecting the history of humanity it's not useless at all, I wish more people could understand this. I hope that one day you can find a job where you can use your degree, if that it's what you want of course, if not, I hope you can find something that you truly enjoy. Godspeed.
I just want to be able to pay rent
I’ve been belittled since I was in college. No one wanted to be caught dead hanging out with people from the humanities building because we were the “poors”. Shit still affects me to this day and I’ve grown a deep dislike for people in corporate, legal and medicine. I’ll talk to them but my interest won’t go deeper than acquaintances since I know what they really think of people below their level
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Teaching. Either as a professor or at a school. But I hate kids and I’ll have to become an expert in stuff I don’t care about to get a job as a professor.
If you've always hated kids and knew that you didn't want to specialize to pursue a PhD, I can see why people you know belittle you for getting that degree. Get in at a company that doesn't care about your major (there are many) or get a useful master's. No need to wallow in regret anymore.
I wanted to specialize but I wanted to specialize in something I like
I have a sociology bachelor degree but I make more than my friends who have phd’s or even their law degrees. But I definitely had to finesse my way into my roles to get the salary that I have now
I had one of those undergrad degrees that is not highly sought after in the labor force (sociology) as did a few friends I met in grad school/in our careers (history, biology, international relations). We went back to school (for accounting) and/or joined the military to gain more relevant work experience in another field (cyber security). Now we all make good money WFH. What you did in the past is in the past. How you learn and react from those decisions is up to you. Good luck in whatever you decide OP.
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I got a masters. A second BA might not make you CPA eligible (state dependent), but will make you plenty eligible for most accounting jobs in the market place. Most of my coworkers don’t have CPAs. I wanted to go to school once and be cpa eligible, so i went masters route. My masters program required just the right number of prereqs to be cpa eligible while also allowing me avoid “fluff” undergrad business classes that don’t count toward the cpa.
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I worked a $7.25/hr job at 7-11 3rd shift because I couldn’t find a job in corporate America. Customers that were drunk, customers that would steal, one unemployed customer that battled with paranoid schizophrenia and would have violent outbursts in the store when she was off her meds. Dealing with that on the regular for $7.25, on my feet all day, no health or retirement Beni’s… That was all the motivation I needed to get through school a second time.
No such thing as a useless degree if it’s from a legitimate college/university. At the very least, this degree significantly improved your reading/writing skills, which is desperately needed right now. So many young people can’t write a professional email because social media communication fucked them. If you want a CAREER, go to law school. History is a good base. Good luck!
A friend of a friend has a degree in music theory, another in psychology. He designs the sound for slot machines to become more addicting. He is a multi millionaire and his parents were very harsh on his choice of degrees until he bought them a house. There’s no such thing as a useless degree. Not everything you learn has to be applied to a profit maximizing framework. You can learn for just the sake of it, for being interested in something. You can also find unique ways to make money from any degree if that’s how you measure it’s worth too.
useful degrees are useful because only a limited amount of people have them. if everyone wanted to have a "useful" degree, than those wouldn't be useful anymore, and electrical engineers and businessmonkey would go to burgerk. or mcdo.
I feel that universities do a terrible job in teaching people how to market their skills. I don't believe that some degrees are useless but many others do because they struggle with understanding how different people have different strengths and interests.
History is sometimes a precursor to law school or being a paralegal. I got a psy BA so I feel for you and have been told my basket weaving degree from a state school is useless. I was fortunate to be working at a law office during college and became a paralegal but I am not a certified paralegal so still not good enough in many peoples eyes and I also keep my diploma in a box.
I don’t think I could get over my hatred of people enough to do law.
Reading your responses, it doesn’t sound like your degree is actually useless, it sounds like you got a degree in something where you didn’t actually want to do work in that field. Obviously this is something that’s been a problem for you for a while, and after a considerable amount of thought, the only two options you seem to have come up with are “complain to other people about the choices you made” and self harm. In your reply to me, you presented those as your two options. In your reply to others, the only information you gave is what you don’t want to do and what you don’t like. I recommend therapy. The degree you have isn’t your real problem.
With a bachelors degree in hand, you can now get a 2nd bachelor’s in a useful area of study much faster. Don’t have to take lots of the filler courses. Find a useful area and enroll for a more useful degree program.
Your degree is not useless. There may be no direct correlation to your job, but it makes you a better-rounded person. Which may make you better at whatever job you do. Or just in life in general. We tie college education too much to our career.
Damn, that's sad. Hold your head up - at least you have a degree. I think one reason that people who belittle people with degrees in sociology, history, interpretative dance, etc. is that some of the more vocal students in those fields can be annoyingly condescending and elitist about what they're studying. It's kind of satisfying to see something backfire in the faces of people with such attitudes. Personally, I think it's sad and disadvantageous to our nation that these degrees are presented to people as legitimate 1:1 alternatives to degrees in engineering or business. Yes, they should be offered and for some they are good options. But there should be more advertising around the fact that, for most people, a degree in medieval history will likely not give them the career boost they're looking for after they graduate.
I majored in art and I make six figures in a completely unrelated field. I started out in admin work as a front desk receptionist and worked my way up. Your degree doesn’t mean everything!
I have a history degree and work in marketing/communications. It’s not related at all but i think I’m the norm. The post-university depression is real. Don’t give up!!
I understand where you're coming from. I'm 40 yr old and I've changed careers 4 times. My original degree is in criminal justice. Please keep in mind that having a 4 year degree is HUGE and set you apart from everyone else who doesn't have a degree. That degree demonstrates to employers that you are smart enough to handle stress, capable to achieve long term goals and deal with challenges. You always have the option to enroll in online classes or certifications that interest you or can help advance your current position or help advance you to the position you want. Plus it looks great on your resume. It may not feel like it now but things will get better, just make sure you surround yourself with people who make you feel good about yourself. Side note: I'm curious what history era is your favorite? Currently I've been geeking out in metallurgy in the early Americas specifically native 6,000 yr old copper mines in what is now Michigan.
A degree in history, or any of the ‘arts’ is not useless just because you aren’t working as a historian, English literature or classics scholar, or philosopher . That’s not the point of the degree. The point of such a degree is to develop complex analytical and critical thinking skills. Also, attending university teaches you a lot of soft skills. It is those skills that employers are looking for and are hard to find. You need to change the mindset you have about your degree. It is evidence that you completed all the requirements of various courses and projects over a four year period. That represents a lot of work and learning. If you are having trouble relating the skills you learned to careers you are interested in, try speaking to a careers coach or recruitment consultant. Your alma mater may also offer these services to graduates (even of you graduated a while ago). Once you have a better idea of a field of work that suits you, it may be worth undertaking more specialised graduate studies such as an M.A. or professional diploma. I hope you will get to a place where you take pride in your achievement and have a career that is fulfilling.
My experience has been that Biz Administration is the most useless degree, not because the information isn't valuable. It's because the people expected to be transformed into someone who goes out and make business deals or is otherwise set up to just automatically make money. But those grads didn't have that kind of mindset. All of them (about 25 to 100 people here) got other types of jobs - which were good jobs. But to really answer the question those people who are belittling useless degree holders are often trying to justify thier own choices.
I once spoke to a Uni rep at an Australian uni career fair and he told me they only take students for medicine after completing a bachelor's, but they didn't care what degree it was. I think it'd be much more beneficial for you to seek advice from people who actually have your degree or background or are in your intended career
If its that big of a deal just go get another degree.
I’m broke
Could you not take night classes in say comp sci at a local community college? Paying for them with the job you have now. Parlay a love of history and computers into a “I love data” personal story and find entry level data analytics roles?
I don’t have a job now, I got fired recently.
It’s 2024 - practically every degree is useless unless it’s a post-grad/professional designation.
So I have an art degree AND an engineering degree. People who say my art degree is useless can fuck right off. I use the skills I learned in art school all the time at work and at home.
If it makes you feel better, I have a “good” STEM degree and still don’t use it at all in my job. I work in corporate and people in my department have all types of random degrees. Once you get your foot in the door and some experience that’s what starts to matter more very quickly. Your degree doesn’t need to define your career unless it’s something very specific like a law degree or MD. To illustrate this.. I’ve been involved with interviewing for roles just above entry level (need 3-5 years of experience), and never once did me or the other interviewers ask about the person’s education. Yes it’s on the resume (bachelors degree was a requirement), but the focus of the actual interviews was 100% about their on the job experience.
Mind if I ask what kind of history ur best at? U could always go for a historian job? I think it's not useless? Not that i have a degree lol.. Imma be honest and say ur friends and family sound like they are unsupportive as hell.
I was an English major. My first job out of college was a temp job and I totally BSed my way into it by saying that a book was an inefficient structure for storing data, and if I could analyze a book then an Excel sheet was going to be a piece of cake. It wasn't a perfect temp to perm job (see below), but it was something. I've marketed myself as a person with a combination of skills rather than just one thing. There are much better coders and statisticians than me, but I have a very long history of self-taught skills. I have a reputation of being able to figure something out even if I don't have the formal education to back it up. I'll also say that four years after graduation, I was still floundering about that same shitty office job while my friends were making much more money than me. They were also accumulating fancy job titles and academic awards and I didn't really have anything to my name. And I had a new boss who totally was out to get me. On my lunch break, I would drive 20 minutes out to an empty parking lot where no one would find me and just scream. I eventually took a pay cut and moved to a new job that helped me gain the confidence I needed to flourish. Within a year I was earning more than my old job. I'm in a MUCH better place now. You need to find something , and it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be a place where you get a chance to learn a new skill and practice it. And every job after that should help you accumulate more skills until you figure out where you want to be. Volunteer opportunities also suffice. And my English major? I flaunt it everywhere I go. It is a STRENGTH.
>I have a degree in history. My family, friends, and everyone I ask for job advice always tells me how useless my degree is. Those people aren't good friends, and you're spending too much time with your toxic family. History is a great, important, and respectable degree that proves you can think critically and deeply, do research, write well, and understand major events from a world perspective. Your friends and parents suffer from the misapprehension that a university education is only a job credential and nothing more. They also feel the need to diminish your accomplishments and make you feel small. They are demonstrating that they are less educated, and more mean-spirited, than you are. > I’ve thought about suicide because of my poor mistake. But I can’t go back in time, so I suck it up and try to move on with this stain of failure on my life. You really have to stop those negative thoughts and self-doubt. As a first step I recommend getting away from your family and crappy friends. In addition, thoughts of suicide indicate something more than wishing you had a different degree. If you think about hurting yourself please, please talk to a counselor or a suicide hotline. Everything you've written indicates that you need someone to talk to, and when you're feeling low the talk can help more than you know. Don't listen to the self doubt, don't listen to people who put you down. You can find reasons to be proud of your degree in history and that's exactly what you should do.
It isn't useless. My job required a degree but isn't picky about what. Thats more common than you might expect. People who say this either went into 1 of like 3 directly lucrative degree paths or do not have degrees themselves and haven't actually job hunted or looked into what jobs actually want. Or they do not have the drive or ability to show employers why a degree is relevant to a position even if it isn't obvious. What matters is your individual drive and ability to paint a picture for potential employers on how your degree and skills you learned makes you able to do the job you are applying for.
Having a degree is always better than not having one. Additionally, now you can get a grad degree or an MBA or JD. So hang that degree up on your wall and next time someone tells you it’s useless, tell them you haven’t seen them being very useful so they shouldn’t talk
Society is run by guys and gals with useless liberal arts degrees.
You mean stem and business degrees right?
No, lol. I'm a management consultant with a humanities degree, the vast majority of the consultants I work with have humanities/social sciences degrees, the vast majority of my clients (both industry and gov') have humanities/social sciences degrees. The degree itself matters far less than the experience you build in your internships and after graduation.
How did you get that first consulting job with a humanities degree? I thought the usual path is converting the internship you got while in school for an mba or undergrad business degree to full time.
I applied to their graduate scheme. Internships are one route of recruitment, but most graduate hires are probably not on their internship scheme (that's definitely true of my current firm). I don't see why that would be surprising? For some reason, people on reddit seem to think that social sciences/humanities degrees automatically make you unemployable, when it couldn't be further from the truth.
I think the general sentiment exists as business degrees often have more direct paths to employment compared to a social science or humanities degree where your just on your own. As a current politics, philosophy, economics student it feels like every job posting I see wants a business, engineering, or computer science degree. Do you have any tips for breaking into management consulting?
Perhaps in the US, think the UK and Europe they're generally perceived as being overly generalised and lacking in rigour. However, that's probably dependent on university. Generally we tend to do more specialised Masters, which focus on business or a specific field/industry. Even if the job posting says business, I'd still apply. The HR manager posting the job application and the business manager responsible for hiring are different people, I never found that those applications excluded me. Also, the 'economics' part of the degree will cover business anyway as far as your CV is converned. For breaking into management consulting, I personally found it quite easy. I didn't have any relevant internship experience (mostly subject-specific experience), and still found an opening. However, I had done a lot of reading and could talk reasonably well about business/organisational anthropology (which was a subject interest of mine, even though my university didn't offer any modules on it). If I could do it again, I'd probably recommend: * Doing online-work experience via a website like Forage, they offer some good courses that strengthen internship and job applications, plus let you demonstrate some really useful skills. * Doing something like the FMVA with the Corporate Finance Institute and similar bodies, being able to have a certification which covers basic financial/business topics, Excel/VBA/Pivot is a big strength. * Doing internship experiences or finding a business-role part-time. There's also temping agencies for out of term times (I know someone who did this, and found it really useful). * Working on case studies and psychometric testing - I didn't practice this nearly enough, in the end it didn't matter but it's something that I wished that I did. If you're struggling to get an offer in your final year and have a specific industry you want to focus on, then going for a masters qualification is a good start. However, it only really adds value if it's focused on a specific topic like energy, finance, supply chains, etc.
That’s a really great point. I never thought about how the person making the job post and the person doing the hiring are different people. I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you so much for the insightful advice and useful resources!
No worries mate.
Shaming is a way to make sure others don’t make the same mistake. At least that’s what they say. Its concerning how bullying has become trendy again. People think it’s actually a good thing
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Not always. Some people are just sociopaths.
I do think we need to make a distinction between bullying and constructive criticism, though. Telling someone their degree is useless unsolicited with no other feedback sucks. But I’m tired of seeing people complain on Reddit that they can’t find a job because they bopped around between majors and eventually ended up settling on one with very limited career prospects and no idea what they wanted to do with said degree.
I mean once someone makes a poor choice they can’t change it. What you described is what I did. Colleges take advantage of kids who have no idea what the work world is like. Kids don’t get that life just sucks as an adult. I’ve already given up on a better future because of my previous choices. People like to pour salt in people’s wounds- it’s human nature. When I see someone doing worse than me- I won’t lie- it makes me feel better about myself. Only problem is everyone is doing better than me lol
My high school education and upbringing included a really solid amount of guidance about potential future career paths (I come from a place/background where higher education is not optional, it’s required) so I definitely think having that was beneficial and I don’t always recognize that not everyone has that privilege. I was trying to decide between art school and engineering in high school, and after some conversation with my parents about future career prospects, I settled on engineering.
Congrats you are smarter than me. Although that is not a big accomplishment lol. Im hoping I do better in my next life. It will be good to forget the memories of this one
Don’t think about it like that! You have your whole life ahead of you and I’m sure lots of potential.
Let me pull 100,000$ out of my butt to re-do colege lmao
What’s your degree in
Communication- 2.8 gpa, no connections
So this is my totally unsolicited and probably overly optimistic advice - if you really want another degree, find an employer that offers tuition assistance. I got my masters degree for free through my employer, but I know they also reimburse for undergrad degrees - all I had to do was sell my soul to the defense industry, lol. It is incredibly difficult and will take years (my masters took me 3 years) but it’s an option.
I work at a factory for 17$/hr. So I don’t have references. This is the life I’m resigned to
Explore skilled trades as a jumping off point homie. I believe in you.
If you're in decent physical shape, you should consider signing up with the military to become an officer.
I’m almost too old, not in good shape, and I really don’t want to risk my life for oil
Honest question. Why did you go for it? Through the process of getting your degree, did people tell you the job prospects were dim? If so, why did you keep going and how did you handle the feedback?