People with "useless" majors and degrees, what do you do now and do you regret it?

It's not what I do, it's who I do, and your Mom loves how I do.

Undergrad degree in Classics. Can't get more useless than that. I make $250K/year running my own business.

No Way wrote:

Why does everyone assume that those with "useless" degrees are liberals?

Because liberals ate more likely to have degrees at all.

R u employed now

I took up nursing first because it's safe. After that I have done are studies and other social sciences for fun while keeping my job. Will be getting into computer science this year. My mother is 63 and I bet she will spend more time at the university in the upcoming years. She is a teacher so she has a safe job

The top ten Most useless majors:

1. Gender Studies

2. Sociology

3. Humanities

4. Theology

5. History

6. Philosophy

7. Acting/Drama

8. Kinesiology

9. Psychology

10. Gender Studies (so useless I had to list it twice)

https://youtu.be/CVEuPmVAb8o

Kinesiology is useless? Not a chance. Gave up my day job to work from home as an online coach a few yrs ago. It’s worked out great. Everyone wants guidance, esp right now.

I'm 46 years old, and do I regret not having a college degree? I really don't know.

I went to Ohio State in Autumn '92, and made it one quarter. I wouldn't even say I had a major because it was just general education types of classes. But I know I felt aimless, but everyone told me I had to have a college degree to make it.

I pretty much wasted the next few years, landing in the Army and hating that too.

But there was one thing I liked, and that was computer programming. I had started in 1987 on a Commodore 64, and was always goofing around with something.

I don't know why, but it never dawned on me that "programming" was a job choice or something you could go to college for. Just didn't have any sort of support structure to know that.

But after the Army, and working another dead-end job in the late 90s, and still programming for fun, including web development and relational database design, I realized I had a knack for it.

I took an entry level job, not IT related, at one of the biggest companies in Central Ohio, and now 20 years later, I've been in IT for the last 19 of those, and make 151k a year as a software developer with some very specialized mathematical knowledge, all self taught.

So yea, I guess it worked out for me, but I still feel I sold myself short somehow. I still love to program, and I make enough and considering living expenses here, I don't worry about money and travel plenty, have lots of nice things.

But I still feel something is missing, and have no answers for it.

I graduated with a BA in chemistry from a rigorous liberal arts school. The classwork was difficult – but it taught me how to think critically and made evidence based, data-driven decisions. High school was very easy for me – college made me work much harder and I had to apply myself. I really enjoyed science and went off to get my PhD in organic chemistry at a top 30 school.

I originally wanted to be a professor, but I saw how brutal the job market was for professors. When I set off to graduate school, the job market for synthetic chemists in big pharma was still quite good. I also realized in graduate school that unless one gets their PhD from a very prestigious Ivy League laboratory, it’s very difficult to get a chemist position in big pharma. I wasn’t in a prestigious lab or Ivy League caliber university – so after 3 years I chose to leave with my MS degree. I was able to find a job as a chemist in big pharma and absolutely loved the work.

While I was in big pharma, lots of site closures and layoffs started to happen – I began to worry about the future for organic chemists in America. Plus, we outsourced everything we possibly could to India, China and the former Eastern Bloc. After about 2 years in the industry, I was able to get a job within big pharma working in manufacturing – I got experience in engineering, capital & expense management, P&L, and quality. After that stint, I moved on to medical device manufacturing as an engineer.

I still enjoy chemistry and sometimes wish I was still doing it, but I do honestly think that it is nearly impossible to hold down a career as a chemist in America nowadays. The jobs for BS/MS chemists have dried up, and the supply of PhD chemists greatly exceeds supply, even from the top-tier schools. If I could do it all over again, I’d get a BS in chemical engineering. With all being said, I am approaching $100K and am performing intellectually stimulating work that helps people in the world, so I am satisfied with the way things turned out. I can’t over emphasize the important of networking and continually learning more in one’s career – most, if not all of my jobs have come from my network and from additional responsibilities I have taken on, not my “core” responsibilities. Food for thought.

Philosophy undergrad

Masters in education

Now retired and have enough money saved not to worry about my future. I still enjoy reading, writing and occasionally creating music.

Oh Please wrote:

So yea, I guess it worked out for me, but I still feel I sold myself short somehow. I still love to program, and I make enough and considering living expenses here, I don't worry about money and travel plenty, have lots of nice things.

But I still feel something is missing, and have no answers for it.

You still love to program? What kind of stuff do you do?

Most of the stuff that big companies require is super straightforward. The same stuff year in and year out. CRUD apps, etc.

Pretty much just pick a framework that does most of the stuff for you, glue some code in, etc.

Not really interesting in my opinion.

Majored in History and making 100k out of school in business consulting, STEM nerds can suck it

Is Nasty_Nadz still around? I'd forgotten that dude.

Swaglord_the_real_one wrote:

You still love to program? What kind of stuff do you do?

Most of the stuff that big companies require is super straightforward. The same stuff year in and year out. CRUD apps, etc.

Pretty much just pick a framework that does most of the stuff for you, glue some code in, etc.

Not really interesting in my opinion.

No doubt there are many "programming" jobs that become boring, but I am 20 years in, and in a position where I've been in charge of a good sized line of business application that deals with financial products for more than a decade.

As a result, I get to set technical direction, and I have the autonomy to work on whatever I want, which helps find projects that are stimulating. For instance, over the past couple of years, we have been switching from .Net WinForm apps to Angular, and back end systems from traditional .net running on very beefy Windows Servers to .Net core, dockerized, and running in Kubernetes.

My next project is to investigate whether Redis is a viable solution to some data-caching issues we have. I'm still hands-on about 70% of the time, the other 30% is mentoring.

Majored in history at a top 10 school. Got my first job trading livestock and meat futures. The history degree was invaluable. I was able to scan and assimilate a large volume of information on a moment's notice and act on it.

I saved every penny I could - not exactly a trait of most futures people - and went to law school at a very highly ranked school. Finished at the top of the class, editor of the law review, etc., which was new to me as my scholarship track days demanded that athletics be a priority. I have done very well - most years - around 400k a year - but I have not practiced law for some time. I did have an aptitude review about 10 years ago which reflected law was a poor choice. I was taken aback at first, but then concluded the aptitude testers were accurate.

I love the history degree to this day for the personal enjoyment it gives me. In hindsight, I should have tried to obtain a practical major as well, something not easy to do at my university. I came from a single mother addiction and poverty situation, so frankly just being on my two feet and having a career is a fortunate circumstance.

My brother majored in statistics, was an NCAA All American, then a Phd in Economics. He is a wel known investment manager, posts here occasionally, easily makes multitudes more than what I do and would tell everyone it is what you do with your degree and skills more than the major itself. He does warn against many of the modern humanities degrees where there is more indoctrination than education (back in my day, the professors were liberal, but did not infuse politics into education).

Got a BS in Chemical Engineering but by the end of it all the companies I was interested in were very mechanical and optics focused. Not a useless degree, but most people I know treat it like it qualified me to do literally anything when I had to bend over backwards to get a job I was interested in just as much as everyone else.

I majored in philosophy and sell running shoes now. Pick a useful major.

Majored in psych. I was a dumb kid who just wanted an easy major and really took college for granted when it came to academics and the fact that my running paid for it. Wish I could do

it over. Graduated with no real plans and sold running shoes for years while training.

Eventually got my act together and earned an associates from a local community college in a completely unrelated healthcare field, got a job right away, and have never worried about job security. Figures. Four year universities aren’t always the best route IMO.

Studied English at top Midwest private school on Dad's dime. Had a good time and did well enough to get a PhD in Linguistics from top public school but not well enough to get a university teaching job. Did a couple of years of Peace Corp after failed job attempts. Returned with a foreign bride and no job prospects so went MHA route at a different top school. Did a little consulting with a small firm before landing a decent upper level job in a large hospital. Finishing up career that turned out ok but it would have been much harder with current school costs and absence of family money. No regrets especially considering ignorance of outcomes from different decisions.