In my view, the undergrad degrees that are useful as credentials are exceptions: The licensed engineering and medical fields. Even the vaunted computer science

In my view, the undergrad degrees that are useful as credentials are exceptions: The licensed engineering and medical fields. Even the vaunted computer science degree is not a meal ticket: You still have to prove that you can code, and are competing with people who are self taught. Now there are some things that, while not formal credentials, are still hard to avoid for certain occupations. People with math and physics degree can be quite competitive for certain kinds of quantitative work. Oddly enough a music performance degree is almost unavoidable if you want to be a working classical musician. Those are areas where it's possible to be self trained, but almost prohibitively difficult.