Why do some people attend top universities to study "useless" degrees?

Fifty years ago there weren’t any “useless” degrees. For example, An individual graduated with a BA in Philosophy, answered a newspaper ad on a whim, and, lo and behold, was launched into a successful career in Information Technology. (The applicant had never seen a computer.)

College in America no longer works the way it used to:

The Law of Supply and Demand

Two decades ago in his book, Another Way To Win, Dr. Kenneth Gray coined the term “one way to win.” He described the OWTW (Only Way To Win) strategy widely followed in the US as:

• Graduate from high school.

• Matriculate at a four-year college.

• Graduate with a degree

in anything.

• Become employed in a professional job.

Dr. Gray’s message to the then “academic middle” was that this was unlikely to be a successful strategy in the future. The succeeding twenty years have proven him inordinately prescient and not just for the “academic middle.”

The simple explanation is that it comes down to “supply” (graduates) and “demand” (suitable jobs).

A half century ago only 7% of high school graduates went on to college. In post-WW II America, our economy begin to boom while the economies of many European and Asian countries were--only slowly--being rebuilt. The “Law of Supply and Demand” strongly favored the freshly minted college graduate.

Today, when forty-five percent go on to college, grads are “a dime a dozen.”

There are about 1,900,000 bachelor’s degree beings conferred every year. There is a fierce competition for the well-paying jobs.

Think of it as playing musical chairs. For example, if you are a Liberal Arts major, your chance of finding a chair (aka a real job that pays a “college” salary.) is about 50–50.

There just aren’t anywhere near enough suitable jobs for the army of high school graduates choosing to go to four-year colleges. College is a competition for a few good jobs, and many are going to lose.

Today wages are flat. We are headed into territory where going to college to become a high school teacher (starting salary of $40,000) doesn’t make economic sense.

Summary

Let’s not call them “useless” degrees. Let’s use Dr. Gray’s terminology and call them “anything” degrees. The reasons universities offer “anything” degrees is because they can. Parents and students are very poor consumers. They haven’t done their homework. They are financially illiterate when it comes to college. They just ASSUME “One Way to Win” still works, and the parent whips out her checkbook while the student starts applying for student loans.