Top 10 Useless College Degrees & Classes

http://www.toptenz.net/to-10-useless-college-classes-degrees.php

 

Some thoughts:

1. Surfing would make for a fun PE credit.

2. I LOLed a bit at the #1 since the wife took a few art history classes in her humanities undergrad program.

3. Georgetown needs to get their program online.

 

The old joke;

The sociology major says "This is why we do things".

The engineering major says "This is how we do things".

The art history major says "Would you like fries with that?"

 

That explains why my wife (a humanities major) and my sister (asian studies and comparative literature majors) went back to grad school and got degrees in different areas.

 

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LOL! Yeah, or like me, who got a degree IN ORDER TO SAY "would you like fries with that?"

She writes from grad school in a different field,

 

My wife jumped from an undergrad humanities degree (lots of courses in history, English lit, art history, etc) with a sufficient amount of DL to an in-residence forensic science master's program that is run out of the chemistry department.

Incidently, she is taking her last final exam as I type this.

 

But is it truly useless?

"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."

John Adams


Best wishes---Jim

 

Beautiful quote. I had only ever seen the first sentence of that quote.

 

Most of those are nuts but the Star Trek class is probably more thought provoking than any of that other philosophy dribble. I dropped out of my first philosophy class never to take it again just because of how uninteresting and obscure the reading selection was. If it had been based on dissecting Star Trek episodes I might have gone on with it. Roddenberry really did a good job of bringing about thought provoking paradigms in an interesting format. That is a good example of a teacher using interesting material to entice her students.

 

I must admire I was never a Star Trek fan bu the few I did watch (the originals) were more thought provoking then I ever imagined!

 

Seeing as how we are all going to end up the same place (dead), isn't everything useless?

I'm asking that question in total seriousness, because I think that most answers that people come up with will challenge the implicit premise of this thread.

I guess that for most people, higher education is entirely instrumental. Education is simply a means to a totally different end. We might want to enjoy great wealth and power or to receive others' respect and esteem. If a college major doesn't bring us closer to realizing those goals, then the major can be dismissed as a worthless subject of study.

For some people, the final payoff is a less-earthy proposition, coming after death perhaps in some heaven or something. So they study religion in hopes of finding salvation or enlightenment or whatever it is. I suppose that there might be few subjects as worthless as a false religion, but few as potentially valuable as a true one.

Poking around universities, we encounter another kind of person, one for whom knowing and understanding are ends in themselves, not just tools for acquiring something else. These natural-born academics form the core of our scientists, historians and philosophers. These are people who are happier reading, studying and learning than they would be earning ten times as much money doing something that didn't interest them. It's a calling, not unlike a monastic vocation (except with a bit less asceticism) that still shows its medieval roots. Artists aren't dissimilar, provided that they aren't just motivated by selling their work and being stars of the gallery scene.

Finally, there are things like happiness, love, compassion and satisfaction, Wisdom too. It isn't clear to me how relevant higher education is to any of those things, perhaps the most important things of all. Certainly some of the wisest and most humane people that I've ever met, the people who have tremendously impressed me and changed my life, weren't the people with the most degrees, the biggest bank accounts and the most august job titles. They weren't typically scholars either, nor did they have the greatest religious faith.

It's something else...

 

Kinda reminds me of my friend that went to St. Johns (both campuses) and then couldn't understand why no Med School wanted her....

 

Maybe in the space of infinity, but in the finite universe of life there is plenty of utility.

I think it is a very simplistic question when applied to the world in which we live.

If the degree has not achieved the desired result it can be considered useless by the person that holds it. While we are all subject to the opinion of others, it is our own self-determination of the choice that matters in the end.

If the study of religion helps you to better understand your faith and eases your mind about death, then it has served a purpose. Whether that could have been forgone with independent study is another issue. It is not necessary to obtain a degree to satisfy personal curiosity.

These academics have to put food on the table. As Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs apply; they cannot think if they do not have their basic needs met. To fulfill happiness in work, you should apply yourself to the profession that exhibits your inherent talents. This does not always provide the basic necessities to reach higher orders of thinking. So you must find something that can fulfill the needs while you apply yourself to your areas of interest. This is where finding useful degrees apply.

They were probably people who found contentment in their work because they were fortunate enough to apply themselves to their own talents. This work most likely fulfils their basic needs.

 

Well, we can't keep pushing that utility off into the future indefinitely, unless we find some way to escape the bounds of mortal existence entirely. At some point we will have to arrive at something in this life that we find intrinsically valuable.

So what do you believe has intrinsic value in this life?

I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that.

But this thread sneered at philosophy and art history and announced those subjects "useless". So can beauty and understanding ever truly be ends, can they ever have intrinsic value in and of themselves? (If only for some, perhaps a small minority, of people?) Or must these kind of subjects, if they are pursued at all, always be instruments for achieving entirely different purposes?

I'm sure that they do, and they do.

But is that why they study Akkadian cuneiform or Bose-Einstein condensates or paraconsistent logic? Are scholars just trying to get comfortable enough in material terms that they can finally do something truly valuable in the future, in another lifetime maybe?

My point is that many professors, certainly the best ones, are actually interested in what they teach. They didn't just choose their major because it offered good job prospects and high salaries. They are passionate about their subjects, it's what motivates them, it's what they find most valuable in life. Their studies are a labor of love, the reason that they sought out the academic life in the first place.

 

Who said anything about pushing it off? You just have to value what life has to offer.

Anything I see as worth doing or having.

Beauty and understanding are abstracts which have no ends except mental satisfaction unless they return tangible results.

The question is, do they do it with their gifts or do they do it by other avenues.

There is a market for just about any skill on earth including those mentioned above. For the more obscure skills, it is up to the possesor to turn that into a living.

If they are already professors in their desired field then they have their needs met. My comments are to those who don't and there are many academics who don't find the time or position that allows them to pursue their dreams.

Not all who choose obscure degrees get a mainstream job that pays the bills. They have to put their dreams on hold while they do something more financially constructive until they figure out how to make a living with their passion.

 

Should I grab a bag of popcorn and watch this thread grow into a "love and birds" thread about philosophical views?

 

It is an off topic discussion thread. You are welcome to watch the soap opera Days of our Useless Degrees.

 

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No need, have some of mine.

 

So, you admit that you are useless? http://forums.degreeinfo.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif


jim

 

From the perspective that in a few billion years when the sun burns away the Earth and in so doing likely destroying the whole human race (if we aren't already extinct) then I guess we're all useless. What the heck, I'm going to go stuff my face with chocolate.