It is not, today, any longer, simply enough to have a sheepskin--in anything--and you get to write your own ticket. It was when I grew up, to be sure, but a college degree (even a 2-yr one) was a relative rarity in those days and was viewed in a much more...liberal light than today, with the expectations that you bring to this argument, today (suggesting your own advanced age).
I'm 28 next month, thanks for asking.
In any case, I don't believe anyone is suggesting that a degree,
in anything, is a passport to a job. Of course it isn't. But the facts remain that a) graduates of all disciplines are more employable and earn more than non-graduates and that b) that's generally irrelevant, given that the point of a degree is not to get you a job at the end of it. How many chemical engineering graduates do you think end up not working as chemical engineers? How many law graduates end up working in fields other than law? I have a friend with a first in Geology from Cambridge who is working as a medical journalist. Was her degree a waste of time and / or money?
Your whole argument is predicated on two misunderstandings. The first is the obvious one that, as has been shown, there is a demand for humanities graduates in the marketplace, and that companies (in the US and the UK) are actively and explicitly seeking out those with humanities degrees. The second is that (virtually) no-one goes into a history or art degree with the pretense of coming out and walking into a job as a Historian (with a capital H) or Artist (with a capital A) (or even Engineer, Mathematician or Physicist). This does not matter, because the point of a degree is to get a degree, and not to learn a narrow set of vocational skills. In fact, were this the case it would actually be
harder for graduates (of any discipline) to find work, because their would be lots of people trained to very high proficiency in a very, very narrow field of knowledge. A degree is not wasted, or pointless, or irrelevant just because someone who has studied it does not get a job in the exact, narrow field that shares its name with the one on their diploma.
How many physics students do you suppose end up as working physicists? Were we to follow the model you propose for humanities in this instance, there would be no state funding for physics.
We cannot, practically or pedagogically, have a specific, vocational degree course for every conceivable career. Thus your argument, such that it is, is absurd from its very outset.
Yes, yes...it's all well and good for a college prof to tell me how a good education is its own reward and if you spend $30-$250k (USD) getting one, so what if the only job you ever have is waiting tables (actually, some wait jobs pay very well...I know this. So please don't now turn this around...very, very few people are going to go through the trouble and expense of a college education with their goals set on a waiting job...they may fall into that after school, figure out they can make a good living at it and as an indidental fact have a college degree, but there are no 4-year degrees in Waiting, that I am aware of).
College graduates earn considerably more, on average, than non-graduates. Of course some courses have higher returns (on average) than others, but that's just an obvious truism.
The percentage of graduates, of any stripe, working tables is slim and / or temporary. I know plenty of people who worked in menial jobs or as temps for a year or so after graduating (often, might I add, out of choice rather than need) before landing excellent, high-salaried positions.
Your bald assertions have no basis in reality (as usual).
