The aforementioned less-useful degrees open a lot more doors than that, particularly administrative and managerial, plus opportunities to make a lateral move in

The aforementioned less-useful degrees open a lot more doors than that, particularly administrative and managerial, plus opportunities to make a lateral move into a graduate program or otherwise post-grad training opportunity in a subject with more practical utility. Any college degree is valuable for getting a higher-paying career but the cost (both direct and opportunity) of going to college paired with bad luck or poor performance afterward may nevertheless make it a bad bet. More vocational programs (even in STEM and "knowledge worker" domains) are a good idea, better than trying to use universities for that purpose, but the lack of prestige appears to be a problem and many of the current options in this space are borderline or outright scams with low-quality education run by very much for-profit entities.