I would argue this point. Many people I know or worked at my college jobs just plain chose the wrong path. Creative writing degrees, Drama degrees, or even one poor girl with over 100K in debt from an Opera degree.
Working as a waiter I even encountered people how made more money waiting tables then with their social work or teaching degrees. Its crazy they still work their college job paying off student debt they never needed.
These people are not at all incompetent they were just told to follow their dreams when they were 17 18 and choose a degree to cater towards their dream, passion, or what have you.
As a counterpoint, people with creative writing degrees can easily, easily slip into any "inbound content marketing specialist" role at $PICK_YOUR_TECH_COMPANY and immediately turn that degree into money. Drama, creative writing, social work, and teaching degrees are all skills. Better, in my opinion, than a "marketing" or "business" degree.
I think you're right. "Marketing", eh. Today's business degrees, so I gather. E.g. what my father learned in the '50s getting one allowed him to take a company public in the '60s.
The other majors have a better chance of teaching something real, which is a good start. I certainly prefer working with a "writer type" when producing documentation, otherwise I end up doing it myself.
>... Better, in my opinion, than a "marketing" or "business" degree.
Unfortunately, reality disagrees with you. And it's reality where we have things such as serviceable debt, credit ratings, employment security and obligations.
The underlying rates of degrees from the various fields haven't changed all that much. Finding a few humanities students who can't find jobs isn't all that helpful.
The main issues are that, since the 70s, a handful of things have happened that students (as a massive whole) haven't reacted appropriately to:
1) There are simply fewer job openings in many of these fields than there once were.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm (you'll have to step back through these reports over time, but note that the increasing industries tend to be the lowest wage industries)
2) The massive rise in the cost of education, coupled with the fact that almost any of the few good-paying jobs requires a bachelor's degree or higher. Supply of workers > demand for workers depresses wages.
https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tabl...
6) Unions, for all their problems real and perceived, were once actually pretty good at holding the line on wages, but have seen ever-decreasing membership.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
Does any of this mean they didn't pick the "right" degree? Maybe part of the problem can be found here. However, the problem is so large among millennials, I'm not sure choice of degree accounts for all that much of why recent college grads have boomeranged. My point is that while students with degrees in various fields hasn't changed much, the rest of the world around them has changed quite a bit. Most of it can't simply be solved with a different degree or more passion.
Consider that my sister started out (without a college degree) working basic jobs until she ended up working recruiting. She's done that for years now, but she's reached a ceiling because jobs in HR ask for a degree.
Any degree.
Communication, Psychology, English, anything.
Now, all that it would take for her to break through is to have some experience in general HR. After that, nobody would even look at the degree. However, there's a ceiling there.
I look at many of my friends who have humanities and Social Science degrees and their real careers didn't take off until their late 20s or early 30s. Does that mean that my friends with Communications degrees ended up in Radio? No. But they would have never ended up where they are without that "any" degree.
I would argue this point. Many people I know or worked at my college jobs just plain chose the wrong path. Creative writing degrees, Drama degrees, or even one poor girl with over 100K in debt from an Opera degree.
Working as a waiter I even encountered people how made more money waiting tables then with their social work or teaching degrees. Its crazy they still work their college job paying off student debt they never needed.
These people are not at all incompetent they were just told to follow their dreams when they were 17 18 and choose a degree to cater towards their dream, passion, or what have you.