From another thread:
Since that seems to be moving away from the original thread, perhaps it would be better for this topic to have its own thread.
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There aren’t 1800+ baccalaureate majors. The 1800+ figure (from mymajors.com) includes two year associate programs as well as certificate programs lasting less than two years (things like dental assisting and taxadermy) often available at vocational centers. The figure also double counts many of the many similar fields and/or subfields which are described differently by different schools.
That said, the original question still stands. At reputable four-year colleges, which majors are “worthy” and which are not?
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Responding to this comment from the original thread…
I think I don’t understand what you mean by “academic potential” and how that is similar or different from “earning potential”. You can get a PhD in just about anything.
And it turns out the government doesn’t pay to employ many of those biology grads either.
What about history, philosophy, classics? Those are all fields with a long and illustrious legacy. There aren’t great jobs for grads in those specific fields and the government doesn’t really fund those fields at all.
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The way that I would look at this: At a four year college (or university), you will spend four years of your life, work hard, and spend quite a bit of money (how much will vary rather widely). Then you graduate. Then what do you do?
The big questions: Do the four years that you spent studying in college help with whatever you intend to do next? If so, was it worth the time and effort and cost?
If your four years in university helps you significantly with the next step, and if you end up with a manageable or no debt, then it is worthy. Otherwise it probably is not.
I do understand that some students after getting a bachelor’s end up back at university getting a master’s or some form of doctorate. This just makes the first four years part of a longer process, to which you can apply the same two questions.
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That seems to be a reasonable way to go about determining whether it makes sense for a particular student to pursue a particular major at a particular school, and is much like the advice that would be provided to parents and prospective students here.
But the context of the question is more about whether or not a college should even offer certain majors. For example, should colleges even offer the option of an English Literature degree, a history degree, a Political Science degree, a Gender Studies degree, etc. What are the worthy degrees, and what are the unworthy degrees at reputable four year institutions?
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Whatever major leads you to a long and fulfilling life. For some it will be Anthropology or Studio Art or Appalachian Studies. For others engineering, accounting, or architecture.
One thing is for sure is that the only long term limitation one has is of their own doing.
Look around - likely most people have careers no where in the realm of their degree.
Sure engineering is more marketable than a liberal art on the margins. But it does you no good if you fail out first semester, as many will and do, bcuz they took it for perceived practicality and not interest and or academic competency.
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I think all majors are “worthy” from an academic viewpoint. There are some that I wouldn’t advise going into major debt to get. If it is worth the four years of opportunity cost to get the degree is a personal decision.
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Wow, I find this question so abrasive and rude. Who is going to decide what is “worthy”? Seems like this thread is trying to be philosophical and maybe needs a class in logic. Or maybe I missed something.
Yep, pretty much sums it up.
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Biology. There I beat @ucbalumnus to it. 
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That’s a pretty vague standard. I’m guessing that you mean “what you intend to do next in your career”? If so, I would disagree. I think college has a pretty significant value beyond what career you may go into, in that it can be a transformative time personally, intellectually, morally, socially, etc. And, choice of major is a part of that larger experience that goes beyond career. Being a philosophy or an English major could have a huge impact on intellectual, moral, or personal development while not obviously relating to any particular career.
I also definitely could be misreading this statement, so please clarify. : )
Overall, I think college is a lot more than a stepping stone to a job, and I therefore think that there are a lot of majors that are “worthy” even if they don’t directly relate to any particular profession.
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Regarding your criticism about this thread generally, I assumed that @ucbalumnus started this thread because in the other thread certain posters were repeatedly casting aspersions on “some majors” while refusing to either identify these majors or to articulate a standard by which the majors were deemed unworthy, and that this thread was an attempt to more openly discuss the issue.
FWIW, I agree that is “abrasive and rude” to suggest that certain college majors aren’t worthy of a college degree. I’d add that to my mind is also extremely condescending and more than a little elitist, but nonetheless that is what some posters apparently believe, so it seems worthwhile to air these ideas more openly so that the issue can be better understood by all. Below are some examples of what I mean, so others will understand the context of the question presented in this thread.
Here a poster suggests that colleges offer “pseudo ‘academic’ fields of study” to allow students with “weak academic skills” to graduate . . .
Here the same poster laments that many majors are essentially worthless . . .
And again, suggesting that many majors exist so that colleges can graduate “unprepared/ underprepared students.”
And again . . .
To my mind, repeatedly casting aspersions on “some majors” without identifying them is much more “abrasive and rude” than openly identifying such majors so that they can be openly discussed.
For full disclosure, I feel the same way about your post in the other thread where you wrote that you wouldn’t name the “much easier” “drop down” majors “for fear of offending but they are well known and have many graduates.” What are these majors? Why bring them up if you won’t identify them? If identifying them is so offensive, then why make the claim in the first place?
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We’ve had this discussion.
The undergraduate majors that aren’t “worthy” are the lowest paying after graduation. And from memory those are music, theater arts, biological sciences, sociology, gender and ethnic studies, etc. 
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I really did not intend to limit it to just career.
One daughter had a double major, in animal sciences and neuroscience (two different bachelor’s degrees). One degree has quite a bit of relevance to her intended career (as a DVM, which she is studying for currently). The other was really just for interest, but it mattered to her (and she put a lot of effort into getting the second degree). Personally I also feel that neuroscience is fascinating, although I never studied anything in this area.
Some students do live with their parents when they are in university. However, for many students this is also their first four years living away from their parents. Again, this is a huge transition. One might call it part of “adulting”.
Quite a few people after graduating university spend some time to figure out what their career path will be. They do not necessarily jump into their long term career right away. Personally at the point that I graduated university I had no clue what I was going to do with my career. My degree helped me with what I did next. Then I did something else. Then I did something else. Then I started getting closer to my eventual career, but I still wasn’t quite there yet. It took a while to figure this out.
It is a path.
However, university is expensive, both in terms of finances and in terms of time and effort. I think that it should be taken as an investment in ourselves.
And yes, I am having trouble figuring out how we know which majors might end up being worth it to us down the road.
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What college majors are not worthy?
Getting a a doctorate in playing the oboe.
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There is something inherently weird to me about the concept of some college majors having less worth than others despite seeing the economic statistics of most majors. My own father’s current income (200K +) is pretty impressive with his Sociology degree (Masters in Social Work), but I hear him degrade his major (but not the degree) and other social sciences even though he has spent his entire career in the social work/non-profit world. What I have found is that the degree or even going to college and the amount of money a person makes (that seems to be what we are really talking about) is more affected by the actual person and in some cases, who they know. My best friend is in the tech world and makes an insane amount of money, but he is the type of person who would have created great wealth with a “Basket Weaving” degree (or no degree at all).
So my preference has always been to encourage my own kids to find things that they enjoy learning about, while also having the mindset to generate wealth through their own internal “prestige” rather than through the name of a school or the subject matter on a college degree. But I get that it may be “easier” to follow a more traditional path by going into a higher paying degree field.
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This topic has been done to death and just comes down to how you define worth. For those of us who define mental enrichment as the goal of education rather than earning potential, all areas of academic study are inherently valuable (“worthy”). If financial ROI figures into your evaluation, you are using a whole different criteria. These two views rarely mesh. The first group finds no basis for this discussion. The second group will just trot out charts, rankings, and studies to determine the various market paybacks on each degree to determine what their individual ROI cutoff is. You might as well retitle this thread, “Which Degrees are You Not Willing to Pay For and Why?”
Oh wait, the archive is full of those.
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Slight modification to the above- most of us do not care at all what full-pay people choose to spend their money on, including degrees of dubious value (or cars, etc). The more important question is what degrees should the government subsidize in the form of loans, which are often defaulted on
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Actually, this thread is meant to discuss the claims in another thread on a different topic (some of which are quoted in post #11 of this thread) where some majors are said or implied to be unworthy (in an academic sense, not necessarily a financial ROI sense). But it has not been mentioned by those claiming such which majors those are or what criteria determines what they see as unworthiness of a major.
It also does not seem like those making such claims are willing to answer the question in either this thread or the original thread on a different topic.
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The NY Times weighs in, at least broadly:
I’m not going to get into a discussion of which majors are academically worthy and which aren’t. My criteria are very simple:
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Does the major equip students with rigorous theories and skills that they can use to help advance human knowledge or apply these theories and skills for the betterment of themselves and society?
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Does the major have sufficient substance and rigorous content to require its students to take 4-6 years of their lives (not to mention the high financial cost)?
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