3 ms·

Who told you any degree would do? People have lambasted underwater basket waving and things like that forever.

teeray 4y ago
Not parent commenter, but I heard the same at the time and thought it was lunacy. The justification was “well, [relative/friend/aquaintance] has a great job in sales at megacorp and their degree is in experimental theology.”
standardUser 4y ago
Lots of entry-level office jobs want a 4-year degree so they know the candidate can read and write at a sufficient level.
dahart 4y ago
Where is underwater basket weaving a degree? (The answer is: nowhere, it doesn’t exist.) That term is a 50+-year old fictional pejorative used as a stand-in for useless academics. Sadly, the supposedly humorous point is entirely undermined by inventing a degree that doesn’t exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving FWIW, the St Louis Fed publishes stats on incomes of degree holders, and I recently read them and found out that the average 4-year college degree holder has 2x the income of non-degree holders. (3x for advanced degrees.) Twice is a really big number and it surprised me, it’s much larger than I had suspected. Obviously some degrees make people more money than others, engineering and sciences tend to yield higher incomes than the arts. But, with an average of double the income across all degrees across all people in the US, it’s easy to see why people recommend any ol’ degree at all, and statistically speaking, it’s a valid point and good advice.
- dinkumthinkum 4y ago
  Focusing on the idea that it is a made up degree is pretty weird. Of course it is. It is a way of conveying a point. Not everything needs a Wikipedia link. :) it reminds of people that whip their phones out to look up every minute thing mentioned in a conversation. The point is that people have talked about useless degrees to the point that they are lampooned for, as you say, 50+ years, which certainly predates 90s kids. Therefore, there was a widespread cultural awareness that a gender studies degree is not likely to be as valuable as electrical engineering. I think too often people think college education is not needed because they can just Google things but they don’t think how much more efficient it is to just know things and be able to reason for themselves.
  - dahart 4y ago
    Since you ignored my main point in favor of ad-hominems, I’ll repeat it: the idea that any degree will do is well supported by the fact that degree holders earn 2x over non-degree holders on average. The only relevant question in this thread about gender studies majors is what their income is compared to people without a college degree. It’s irrelevant what their income is compared to EE majors. BTW, you used the word “value” with gender studies but then acknowledged in your last sentence that education has value that is non-monetary; please be careful about using language that conflates income with value (only mentioning since you did it in another comment as well). Gender studies might have people earning relatively lower incomes compared to some other degrees, but that doesn’t mean it has low value; as sub-branch of history and anthropology, and at a time when society is fiercely debating gender, gender studies is particularly relevant and useful and socially valuable today. As far as underwater basket weaving, if you don’t have any actual examples and have to make up a fake one, then it sounds like the point you’re trying to make probably has no basis in reality, and probably isn’t true. That’s what use of the term “underwater basket weaving” by anyone tells me, and it tends to get trotted out more often on Fox News to make a straw-man point than by reasonable people having a reasonable discussion. As far as Wikipedia links (or any references), it’s true that not everything needs one, but sometimes they’re helpful to support & clarify a discussion. It wasn’t clear that you knew underwater basket weaving wasn’t a degree, but I also added it because the article contains some interesting and humorous history behind the term “underwater basket weaving”. You could maybe use one or two links here in this thread to back up your claims, for example, about what “people” lambast & talk about, and what “widespread cultural awareness” exists. As it stands, you’ve stated a lot of opinion and assumptions without demonstrating much relevance. Who cares if someone somewhere lambasted their biased idea of a useless degree? Why should that have any bearing on what anyone else does? Answering those questions thoughtfully might require a link or two…

Not parent commenter, but I heard the same at the time and thought it was lunacy. The justification was “well, [relative/friend/aquaintance] has a great job in sales at megacorp and their degree is in experimental theology.”

standardUser 4y ago

Lots of entry-level office jobs want a 4-year degree so they know the candidate can read and write at a sufficient level.

dahart 4y ago

Where is underwater basket weaving a degree? (The answer is: nowhere, it doesn’t exist.) That term is a 50+-year old fictional pejorative used as a stand-in for useless academics. Sadly, the supposedly humorous point is entirely undermined by inventing a degree that doesn’t exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving FWIW, the St Louis Fed publishes stats on incomes of degree holders, and I recently read them and found out that the average 4-year college degree holder has 2x the income of non-degree holders. (3x for advanced degrees.) Twice is a really big number and it surprised me, it’s much larger than I had suspected. Obviously some degrees make people more money than others, engineering and sciences tend to yield higher incomes than the arts. But, with an average of double the income across all degrees across all people in the US, it’s easy to see why people recommend any ol’ degree at all, and statistically speaking, it’s a valid point and good advice.

dinkumthinkum 4y ago
Focusing on the idea that it is a made up degree is pretty weird. Of course it is. It is a way of conveying a point. Not everything needs a Wikipedia link. :) it reminds of people that whip their phones out to look up every minute thing mentioned in a conversation. The point is that people have talked about useless degrees to the point that they are lampooned for, as you say, 50+ years, which certainly predates 90s kids. Therefore, there was a widespread cultural awareness that a gender studies degree is not likely to be as valuable as electrical engineering. I think too often people think college education is not needed because they can just Google things but they don’t think how much more efficient it is to just know things and be able to reason for themselves.
- dahart 4y ago
  Since you ignored my main point in favor of ad-hominems, I’ll repeat it: the idea that any degree will do is well supported by the fact that degree holders earn 2x over non-degree holders on average. The only relevant question in this thread about gender studies majors is what their income is compared to people without a college degree. It’s irrelevant what their income is compared to EE majors. BTW, you used the word “value” with gender studies but then acknowledged in your last sentence that education has value that is non-monetary; please be careful about using language that conflates income with value (only mentioning since you did it in another comment as well). Gender studies might have people earning relatively lower incomes compared to some other degrees, but that doesn’t mean it has low value; as sub-branch of history and anthropology, and at a time when society is fiercely debating gender, gender studies is particularly relevant and useful and socially valuable today. As far as underwater basket weaving, if you don’t have any actual examples and have to make up a fake one, then it sounds like the point you’re trying to make probably has no basis in reality, and probably isn’t true. That’s what use of the term “underwater basket weaving” by anyone tells me, and it tends to get trotted out more often on Fox News to make a straw-man point than by reasonable people having a reasonable discussion. As far as Wikipedia links (or any references), it’s true that not everything needs one, but sometimes they’re helpful to support & clarify a discussion. It wasn’t clear that you knew underwater basket weaving wasn’t a degree, but I also added it because the article contains some interesting and humorous history behind the term “underwater basket weaving”. You could maybe use one or two links here in this thread to back up your claims, for example, about what “people” lambast & talk about, and what “widespread cultural awareness” exists. As it stands, you’ve stated a lot of opinion and assumptions without demonstrating much relevance. Who cares if someone somewhere lambasted their biased idea of a useless degree? Why should that have any bearing on what anyone else does? Answering those questions thoughtfully might require a link or two…