Maggie's Farm

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
--Thomas Carlyle

We can easily test which of these views are predominant.

We'll just let student loans be dischargeable in bankruptcy with the surrender of the credential and the removal of any official or unofficial acknowledgement of its granting by the conferring university.

See how many former students are willing to give up the credential and trade on what they learned?

Well, the universities sell number 3. They may try to bait and switch to one of the others, but #3 is the only one that justifies the current fees charged.

Now, if someone wishes to pursue one of the other reasons, more power to them. But, please, stop whining about not being able to find a job. Of course, you can't find a job that uses your degree.

First off, unless you become a university professor, you are already unlikely to use most of what is taught. Few people who studied higher math use higher math in their work.

Second, if you avoided the dreaded "vocational" degrees, then by definition, you didn't improve your employability or ability to do useful work for money payment.

Third, technology, brought to you by those dreaded "vocational" majors have rendered many fields that took in the useless majors moot. Jobs in publishing, journalism, law research, etc. are being commoditized, automated and democratized. Basically, the capital equipment/monopoly access needed to do them are no long expensive or defendable.

So you got a worthless degree, now learn some job skills. Try to be the best barrista you can be. Hope that your time in "higher learning" gave you the ability to spot and exploit opportunities using your critical thinking. But if you are just a reguritator, then you are screwed. Original thought is where the money is.