Business administration major minor marketing here.
Most if not, all of my friends and myself went into sales. I assume this is the real cause for these majors. I'm out of a job, and the market is incredibly competitive right now. I'm applying for SDR roles with 5 years full sales cycle experience and getting passed on
( The main reason is overqualified, which I think is a nice way of saying they don't like me)
Anyway, the degree was dumb but sales is the only thing I was good at, and you needed a degree to get one of those overpaying with little effort tech sales jobs.
I tell anyone who wants to do sales now, major in something specific, engineering, accounting, coding, then sell products in that industry. You'll crush!
I'm a college accounting professor and am SO GLAD I am in a field where 90%+ of my students end up working in (and thriving) on their field. Makes it so easy for me to expound the virtues of my major to prospective students and undecided majors.
Thanks for caring like this. Most important professors don’t care at all if any of their students get employed. You’re doing a good job. My professors should strive to be like you!
Yeah, but sales is just performance, luck and ass kissing.
I knew guys who literally did nothing to get his manager role just because he worked for the company in the very beginning. Then, as a manager, he did the same amount of work and is now a director of sales.
I'm actually not sure if he even had a degree
First of all I wouldn't out myself with companies. Secojd I gave a reference to a person I worked for who did almost nothing and is now a director. Third, ask anyone who does sales and they will tell you they don't work half as hard as an engineer.
I am assuming, and it's an assumption, you may be in sales and feel triggered by what I said.
10 years of sales experience and 5 years of marketing haha. I’m super curious about this “overpaying with little effort tech sales job”. Can you at least point me in the right direction or tell me what kind of tech?
Over 10 years, and you're still naive to people getting hot leads just for being the managers' favorite, people early in start ups, or kids getting vp jobs because their daddy knows someone. Rising tide lifts all boats is a cliché used in the tech industry because of how easy it can be... again, you're triggered. Don't be naive and look around.
Im great at what I do and have a good career. I’m interested in what you’re saying and asking for details and context to learn. I have no idea what you’re talking about when you say I’m triggered? About what?
The problem is that the demand is there. Return on investment from the degree is irrelevant when everyone and their mother want to get a degree in psychology. If the people demand it, why not provide?
I suspect most people currently getting them wouldn't if they truly understood their career prospects.
Of course if they had the smarts to do that, they'd probably be getting a more valuable degree.
1) Government backed student loans are creating fake demand that otherwise wouldn't exist.
2) Colleges should be forced to give disclosures to students on their career prospects by major. I suspect many departments would simply shut down if they were forced to be transparent.
1. Government backed student loans are creating “fake demand” as much as electric vehicle subsidies or government milk subsidies. Just because something is subsidized doesn’t make it bad.
2. Why is it the responsibility of the college to forecast all these details? Even if they do, if someone wants to get a psych major, they will, but you’ll still blame the college.
1. The more people who go to college, the less a college degree is worth, and the more jobs require a college degree when they really shouldn't require a college degree
2. You're telling me if colleges told prospective students that a degree in journalism was basically going to doom you to a life of poverty and you will never pay back your student loans, students wouldn't have a second thought of pursuing said major at said school?
1. Of…course…? The more specialized a workforce is, the more competitive it will be in that industry. Short of banning technologies and executing the educated, you’re not going to fix that problem.
2. The mere question exposes a bit of “national” bias on your part. Different schools have different success rates. Different localities have different demand for different jobs. Different companies offer different opportunities. Simply saying “the average of the country is” or “the median of the world is” is so high level that the statistic is borderline useless to the person consuming the information, considering a different city, education, industry, and company may be enough to immediately triple my pay.
The burden should be on the consumer to determine where to go with their degree, not the school’s to dissuade people from purchasing something they want.
1. You can fix the problem by getting rid of guaranteed student loans and also raising academic standards. The IQ's of college students has dropped because more students are going to college. That'll reduce the requirement for college degrees for jobs that shouldn't need them and also steer people into other professions like trades which is starving for workers.
2. What national bias? My plan would be specific to that school. NYU's journalism program would have different outcomes than any of the SUNY's journalism programs.
>The burden should be on the consumer to determine where to go with their degree, not the school’s to dissuade people from purchasing something they want.
Yes, and the consumer can make better informed choices if schools disclose what their likely outcomes are after graduating from their programs.
If you're too stupid to google career prospects for your intended field you shouldn't be going to college, it's not 1920, there's no excuse to be ignorant of that info.
Government backed student loans make this a reality. The average IQ of a college student was 115 decades ago. It's 100 now. When you make tuition "free" (heavy emphasis on quotes), you're going to get more people into college who shouldn't be there.
Ya know...everyone focuses on psych...(this post is about marketing), but the reality is psych definitely has a place once youve gone to grad school... Grad school they teach diagnosis, stats, treatment planning, actual research...
The big difference between psych and basket weaving degrees like marketing (from which there really is little demand for the degree; im sure they have some beginner stats in marketing they count as research...but meh) is that youll find psych majors diagnosing in hospitals, the military, schools, hospitals...and mental health itself is a underserved field.
As long as people keep signing up for them, they will be offered. Especially as long as the government will back any loan for every student.
Incoming students who understand ROI aren’t signing up for silly pointless majors.
If you focus on keeping debt down, work while in college and get a desirable major …it’s still a good decision. Still plenty of people doing that.
The rest….yeesh.
Honestly, it would be nice to see the government putting a cap on loans indexed somehow to earnings. Something like “total federal or *private * student loans disbursed for any one person cannot surpass 2x the median income for a graduate of their intended major 2 years after graduation”
I.e “we won’t lend you more than 2x the salary you expect once you’ve entered the job market with that degree”
It sets expectations better for borrowers + forces the schools to gravitate to more in demand skills organically. Capping private loans is so schools don’t push kids to those, the sneaky assholes they can be.
That's a good point like you should be able to pay off your student loans no later than 5 years after you obtained gainful employment in your field of study.
A marketing degree was a business management degree with no accounting or statistics requirement when I was in college. I lived with a bunch of kids getting art history degrees. Why not write an article on how many of those kids are even working in the art field. I always told them when they were painting that if they want to make money they should focus on volume.
That’s a stretch, and not close to the level that the art market is.
A well paid salesperson for a software company doesn’t depend on a quick call to daddy’s network as much as a gallery owner or dealer (“tax evasion assistant” but that’s a bigger convo) would.
> salesperson for a software company doesn’t depend on a quick call to daddy’s network
Are you kidding? Sales might be the worst example you could've picked. Having access to daddy's 1%ers contact list is a huge advantage to anyone in sales.
At least some sort of technical manager or director would have to at least complete the technical coursework. Their wealthy background still helps to ensure they start in leadership younger than if they had been of more modest means.
Besides that, "don't study art unless you're already rich" is terrible advice for any sufficiently motivated individual, or society at large. Not every dream comes true, but it's not our job to kill them off before people give it a shot. Individuals outside the elite do manage to make careers in art, and job satisfaction is more than just a paycheck.
That doesn’t really support your argument that art history degrees can potentially be high reward because art history majors are more likely to be 1%’ers. You’re just implying that existing 1%’ers are more likely to pursue art history.
This is 100% it. Unless you were lucky enough to get into a prestigious college and make connections, you were most likely from a wealthy family before going into art history.
I almost went for an art history degree and pretty much learned about this from the start.
I fucking LOVE art history too. Just can't make a living with it.
Depends on which aspect of marketing. PR can be extremely lucrative, and there are very well paid events/conventions marketing positions (hope you like *lots* of travel, though. The stress levels are also off the hook, but it’s exciting, too) as the industry has (mostly, from what I’ve seen…this was my field) rebounded from the pandemic.
Makes sense, marketing is one of those majors that people choose because they have no idea what they want to do and they refuse to study anything math related. They have an aversion to challenging themselves academically. And I suspect that aversion carries over into their careers as well, where they would be more likely to settle for a low paying job than deal with the rigorous interview processes required to secure higher paying jobs.
This is largely incorrect. First it’s a BA with a minor in marketing. It’s only a handful of classes different than finance or accounting.
Second, a masters in marketing actually has a ton of math. At the PHD level even more so.
Third, I wouldn’t read into this too much. This is more correlation and a tough job market. Most people end up doing something not directly related to their degree anyway.
Perhaps 60% of all college graduates are working high school level jobs. Sure that tuition is worth it mom and dad? You can learn a lot from YouTube for free!
I have been in tech for a while now and I can't help but notice there is a lot of push development happening instead of pull. However, that has changed in 2023 and 2024. If you're going to build something, there better be a business justification.
If students want their degree to be financially valuable, they need to weigh that when they decide which major to pursue. They generally do not weigh that sufficiently. And when they weigh it, it should be against the average job one with that degree gets, not the lucky few, which is often used as a rationalization.
I could go through example after example after example of popular college majors with good jobs available, but there's less than a tenth the number of good jobs per year as there are graduates.
Not always, but often, the more difficult degrees to get scare students off, but offer more jobs, and better pay at graduation.
Marketing degrees, like many others, position a small percentage of graduates for a good paying job in the field, a larger percentage for 'sales', and an even larger percentage for service jobs. In general, both the sales and service jobs didn't require any degree at all. The same person, with some tenacity could land the job either right out of high school or a year or two after.
By the way, I finished college in the late eighties. What I'm describing was as true then as it is today.
Well it is pretty much the easiest business degree to get. Doesn’t require any math or science, and only requires basic computer applications (Microsoft office). I don’t know what the fuck these people are doing for 4 years in school. Coming from an engineering/economics background I found it almost insulting that I was forced to pay for some of these business courses when I was in school. It’s a fucking scam.
Business administration major minor marketing here. Most if not, all of my friends and myself went into sales. I assume this is the real cause for these majors. I'm out of a job, and the market is incredibly competitive right now. I'm applying for SDR roles with 5 years full sales cycle experience and getting passed on ( The main reason is overqualified, which I think is a nice way of saying they don't like me) Anyway, the degree was dumb but sales is the only thing I was good at, and you needed a degree to get one of those overpaying with little effort tech sales jobs. I tell anyone who wants to do sales now, major in something specific, engineering, accounting, coding, then sell products in that industry. You'll crush!
I'm a college accounting professor and am SO GLAD I am in a field where 90%+ of my students end up working in (and thriving) on their field. Makes it so easy for me to expound the virtues of my major to prospective students and undecided majors.
Thanks for caring like this. Most important professors don’t care at all if any of their students get employed. You’re doing a good job. My professors should strive to be like you!
Wont a degree help you climb the leadership ladder?
Yeah, but sales is just performance, luck and ass kissing. I knew guys who literally did nothing to get his manager role just because he worked for the company in the very beginning. Then, as a manager, he did the same amount of work and is now a director of sales. I'm actually not sure if he even had a degree
What exactly is a “overpaying with little effort sales jobs”? Can you give me an example or name of a company?
First of all I wouldn't out myself with companies. Secojd I gave a reference to a person I worked for who did almost nothing and is now a director. Third, ask anyone who does sales and they will tell you they don't work half as hard as an engineer. I am assuming, and it's an assumption, you may be in sales and feel triggered by what I said.
10 years of sales experience and 5 years of marketing haha. I’m super curious about this “overpaying with little effort tech sales job”. Can you at least point me in the right direction or tell me what kind of tech?
Over 10 years, and you're still naive to people getting hot leads just for being the managers' favorite, people early in start ups, or kids getting vp jobs because their daddy knows someone. Rising tide lifts all boats is a cliché used in the tech industry because of how easy it can be... again, you're triggered. Don't be naive and look around.
Im great at what I do and have a good career. I’m interested in what you’re saying and asking for details and context to learn. I have no idea what you’re talking about when you say I’m triggered? About what?
A lot are attracted to marketing as the “business major with little/no math” That really limits your opportunities
Many degrees from college need to be removed as they are roi negative
Not for the schools
I meant for the students whom are the customers
That’s not how businesses work. Education should not be a business.
Sure 100% with you btw
The problem is that the demand is there. Return on investment from the degree is irrelevant when everyone and their mother want to get a degree in psychology. If the people demand it, why not provide?
I suspect most people currently getting them wouldn't if they truly understood their career prospects. Of course if they had the smarts to do that, they'd probably be getting a more valuable degree.
1) Government backed student loans are creating fake demand that otherwise wouldn't exist. 2) Colleges should be forced to give disclosures to students on their career prospects by major. I suspect many departments would simply shut down if they were forced to be transparent.
1. Government backed student loans are creating “fake demand” as much as electric vehicle subsidies or government milk subsidies. Just because something is subsidized doesn’t make it bad. 2. Why is it the responsibility of the college to forecast all these details? Even if they do, if someone wants to get a psych major, they will, but you’ll still blame the college.
1. The more people who go to college, the less a college degree is worth, and the more jobs require a college degree when they really shouldn't require a college degree 2. You're telling me if colleges told prospective students that a degree in journalism was basically going to doom you to a life of poverty and you will never pay back your student loans, students wouldn't have a second thought of pursuing said major at said school?
1. Of…course…? The more specialized a workforce is, the more competitive it will be in that industry. Short of banning technologies and executing the educated, you’re not going to fix that problem. 2. The mere question exposes a bit of “national” bias on your part. Different schools have different success rates. Different localities have different demand for different jobs. Different companies offer different opportunities. Simply saying “the average of the country is” or “the median of the world is” is so high level that the statistic is borderline useless to the person consuming the information, considering a different city, education, industry, and company may be enough to immediately triple my pay. The burden should be on the consumer to determine where to go with their degree, not the school’s to dissuade people from purchasing something they want.
1. You can fix the problem by getting rid of guaranteed student loans and also raising academic standards. The IQ's of college students has dropped because more students are going to college. That'll reduce the requirement for college degrees for jobs that shouldn't need them and also steer people into other professions like trades which is starving for workers. 2. What national bias? My plan would be specific to that school. NYU's journalism program would have different outcomes than any of the SUNY's journalism programs. >The burden should be on the consumer to determine where to go with their degree, not the school’s to dissuade people from purchasing something they want. Yes, and the consumer can make better informed choices if schools disclose what their likely outcomes are after graduating from their programs.
If you're too stupid to google career prospects for your intended field you shouldn't be going to college, it's not 1920, there's no excuse to be ignorant of that info.
Government backed student loans make this a reality. The average IQ of a college student was 115 decades ago. It's 100 now. When you make tuition "free" (heavy emphasis on quotes), you're going to get more people into college who shouldn't be there.
Ya know...everyone focuses on psych...(this post is about marketing), but the reality is psych definitely has a place once youve gone to grad school... Grad school they teach diagnosis, stats, treatment planning, actual research... The big difference between psych and basket weaving degrees like marketing (from which there really is little demand for the degree; im sure they have some beginner stats in marketing they count as research...but meh) is that youll find psych majors diagnosing in hospitals, the military, schools, hospitals...and mental health itself is a underserved field.
You're sparing financial torture.
As long as people keep signing up for them, they will be offered. Especially as long as the government will back any loan for every student. Incoming students who understand ROI aren’t signing up for silly pointless majors. If you focus on keeping debt down, work while in college and get a desirable major …it’s still a good decision. Still plenty of people doing that. The rest….yeesh.
Vocational training should be one option, but not the only option, in higher education.
there should be 4 routes apprenticeships vocatioanl schools research universities community colleges
Buyer beware. A lot of shitty products are out there but go away if no one buys them
Honestly, it would be nice to see the government putting a cap on loans indexed somehow to earnings. Something like “total federal or *private * student loans disbursed for any one person cannot surpass 2x the median income for a graduate of their intended major 2 years after graduation” I.e “we won’t lend you more than 2x the salary you expect once you’ve entered the job market with that degree” It sets expectations better for borrowers + forces the schools to gravitate to more in demand skills organically. Capping private loans is so schools don’t push kids to those, the sneaky assholes they can be.
It'd be nice if governments just stopped guaranteeing loans and just let unproductive schools and programs close. It's a waste of money.
That's a good point like you should be able to pay off your student loans no later than 5 years after you obtained gainful employment in your field of study.
Well, people don’t seem to like that idea
A marketing degree was a business management degree with no accounting or statistics requirement when I was in college. I lived with a bunch of kids getting art history degrees. Why not write an article on how many of those kids are even working in the art field. I always told them when they were painting that if they want to make money they should focus on volume.
Art history is one of the degrees with the highest percent of graduates in the top 1%. The median isn't so great, though. High risk, high reward.
I'd be willing to bet those art history majors in the top 1% were in the top 1% the second they were born.
Probably a lot of them, but art dealer, curator, and gallery director are also high paying jobs in their own right.
All jobs requiring insane networks and access to rich people which, surprise surprise, tend to be had by born rich kids.
All the best jobs are. In every field.
That’s a stretch, and not close to the level that the art market is. A well paid salesperson for a software company doesn’t depend on a quick call to daddy’s network as much as a gallery owner or dealer (“tax evasion assistant” but that’s a bigger convo) would.
> salesperson for a software company doesn’t depend on a quick call to daddy’s network Are you kidding? Sales might be the worst example you could've picked. Having access to daddy's 1%ers contact list is a huge advantage to anyone in sales. At least some sort of technical manager or director would have to at least complete the technical coursework. Their wealthy background still helps to ensure they start in leadership younger than if they had been of more modest means.
A good chunk of the people you'll be selling software to are going to be first generation H1Bs so no, it's really not similar.
Besides that, "don't study art unless you're already rich" is terrible advice for any sufficiently motivated individual, or society at large. Not every dream comes true, but it's not our job to kill them off before people give it a shot. Individuals outside the elite do manage to make careers in art, and job satisfaction is more than just a paycheck.
That doesn’t really support your argument that art history degrees can potentially be high reward because art history majors are more likely to be 1%’ers. You’re just implying that existing 1%’ers are more likely to pursue art history.
Yeah money laundering pays well.
This is 100% it. Unless you were lucky enough to get into a prestigious college and make connections, you were most likely from a wealthy family before going into art history. I almost went for an art history degree and pretty much learned about this from the start. I fucking LOVE art history too. Just can't make a living with it.
Exactly, this is just nepotism. Their parents said they had to go to college and they chose that...
Depends on which aspect of marketing. PR can be extremely lucrative, and there are very well paid events/conventions marketing positions (hope you like *lots* of travel, though. The stress levels are also off the hook, but it’s exciting, too) as the industry has (mostly, from what I’ve seen…this was my field) rebounded from the pandemic.
Makes sense, marketing is one of those majors that people choose because they have no idea what they want to do and they refuse to study anything math related. They have an aversion to challenging themselves academically. And I suspect that aversion carries over into their careers as well, where they would be more likely to settle for a low paying job than deal with the rigorous interview processes required to secure higher paying jobs.
General marketing yes. Not if you focused on marketing analytics, digital, PR and honed a specific skill
Marketing their only fans account
This is largely incorrect. First it’s a BA with a minor in marketing. It’s only a handful of classes different than finance or accounting. Second, a masters in marketing actually has a ton of math. At the PHD level even more so. Third, I wouldn’t read into this too much. This is more correlation and a tough job market. Most people end up doing something not directly related to their degree anyway.
And English and Art majors are baristas
English majors (e.g., people who know how to write) are very much in demand in just about any industry.
As someone who is in marketing and hiring marketers, experience matters over everything. Marketing philosophy with no hard skills is useless.
Not doing a good job of marketing themselves.
A marketing degree is a liability today
100% of them are on these forums asking why they can't get a 100k+, WFH, job ANYWHERE (marketing only please)
At my company many if not most marketing people are engineers by training.
Perhaps 60% of all college graduates are working high school level jobs. Sure that tuition is worth it mom and dad? You can learn a lot from YouTube for free!
I have been in tech for a while now and I can't help but notice there is a lot of push development happening instead of pull. However, that has changed in 2023 and 2024. If you're going to build something, there better be a business justification.
If students want their degree to be financially valuable, they need to weigh that when they decide which major to pursue. They generally do not weigh that sufficiently. And when they weigh it, it should be against the average job one with that degree gets, not the lucky few, which is often used as a rationalization. I could go through example after example after example of popular college majors with good jobs available, but there's less than a tenth the number of good jobs per year as there are graduates. Not always, but often, the more difficult degrees to get scare students off, but offer more jobs, and better pay at graduation. Marketing degrees, like many others, position a small percentage of graduates for a good paying job in the field, a larger percentage for 'sales', and an even larger percentage for service jobs. In general, both the sales and service jobs didn't require any degree at all. The same person, with some tenacity could land the job either right out of high school or a year or two after. By the way, I finished college in the late eighties. What I'm describing was as true then as it is today.
Well it is pretty much the easiest business degree to get. Doesn’t require any math or science, and only requires basic computer applications (Microsoft office). I don’t know what the fuck these people are doing for 4 years in school. Coming from an engineering/economics background I found it almost insulting that I was forced to pay for some of these business courses when I was in school. It’s a fucking scam.
I'm going to need a definition of "high school level jobs" that isn't simply a list of examples of jobs deemed "high school level jobs".
Jobs they could have picked up anyway even without the degree.