Imagine a meteorologist describing a weather event. She will likely name various changes in the Earth's atmosphere in various locations and describe how they all converged to produce a single weather event in a particular location.
Rather than being a meteorologist I am going to be a sociologist. The conditions I am going to name are found in our man-made social, political and economic systems, not in the atmosphere. Most importantly, I am not going to talk about an event. I am going to talk about how variables in the sphere known as American culture resulted in a particular phenomenon: the "useless degree".
The "useless degree" is something that is taken for granted by almost everybody. Where people disagree is why the "useless degree" exists and what to do about it.
Before I describe the competing views on the "useless degree" it is important to be clear what I am talking about. The "useless degree" is not simply a credential awarded by an accredited academic institution that compares unfavorably to other such credentials. The "useless degree" is a phenomenon that while it appears in tangible form as a credential awarded alongside other credentials is a conglomerate of a lot of controversial cultural, political and economic baggage. It takes a lot more than position in the academic pecking order to obtain "useless degree" status.
Those to the right on the political spectrum will tell you that, ultimately, a degree is a "useless degree" because it is the culmination of indoctrination into useless academic word salad that is published in journals that only academics read and that teaches nothing about the real world.
Those to the left on the political spectrum will tell you that a degree is a "useless degree" because as individuals and as a society we have lost sight of the importance of certain subject matter to the healthy functioning of a liberal democracy.
I think that, on the contrary, the "useless degree" is the precipitation that has resulted from the convergence of several developments into a perfect storm.
First, the United States of America transitioned from an industrial economy centered on manufacturing to a post-industrial economy centered on the service industry.
Second, due to a variety of factors such as the G.I. Bill, the Cold War, Sputnik I, men trying to avoid service in Vietnam, women entering the workforce en masse, and Title IX, college enrollments swelled.
Third, globalization and neoliberalism resulted suddenly in the relatively free movement of capital, labor, currencies and financial resources across borders. The working class in the U.S., followed by the middle class, gradually declined. Household incomes in the Global South rose.
Fourth, neoliberalism domestically resulted in things like pensions being replaced by 401k investments; deregulation; wages stagnating and being replaced by credit cards and other consumer credit (and the resulting debt load); and, most importantly, the cost of job training being transferred to households in the form of expensive college tuition paid mostly through still more household debt (student loans).
Fifth, college, therefore, became a commodity purchased by "consumers" (parents and their children) for training for and entry into the middle class. College became an expensive investment like a house, and returns on that investment in the form of a comfortable middle class lifestyle were expected.
Finally, naturally not all of this new mass of students was going to study in fields like engineering. Other academic programs had to be pursued by many.
The combination of all of these developments led to the "useless degree".
Earning a degree--any degree--became a requirement for a prosperous economic future. A high school diploma was suddenly useful only as a ticket to college enrollment. Academic programs such as Philosophy that never existed as job training were suddenly being filled with students who expected middle class economic security to be the result. An asymmetry between the needs of the economy, the expectations of politicians and employers, and the traditional structure and values of academia ensued. Higher education, the knowledge economy, and competitiveness in a neoliberal global economy became fronts in the culture wars. The neoliberal university became the new higher education model. Following the neoliberal script, governments, university administrators and the households investing sometimes more than the cost of a house to purchase a college education put all academic programs under scrutiny. It was a perfect set of conditions for a perfect storm. Any program that could not clearly show direct tangible economic benefits became a "useless degree".
In other words, it is a mistake to think that any intrinsic qualities or properties of a BA in History, such as the content of the courses, the skills developed, etc. make it a "useless degree". Its subjective extrinsic value in a neoliberal economy is what makes it a "useless degree".
The conservatives attacking "useless degrees" and the liberals defending them both seem oblivious to the instrumentality and efficiency that neoliberalism demands. Both sides seem to see the intrinsic qualities of a "useless degree" as universal across space and time and as the fault line of the whole controversy.
So what does make a "useless degree" useless? The answer is simple: the fact that it is a degree program. It is not uncommon to hear critics say that college students should have to take some courses in History, Philosophy, Sociology, etc., but, gasp, they should not be pursuing four-year degrees devoted to those disciplines. It's not that the existence of History courses does not lead to job creation. It's that a DEGREE in History does not lead to job creation.
In other words, History, Philosophy, English, Anthropology, etc. are only useful in service of maintaining the conditions necessary for markets to flourish. Only requiring all students to have the basic knowledge needed for a citizenry that helps maintain the conditions, such as healthy democracies, necessary for markets to flourish is needed. A DEGREE in disciplines like Philosophy is "useless". In other words, awarding liberal arts degrees is inefficient.
Free markets, and thriving in them, are what matter to today's policymaker, bureaucrat and taxpayer, whether they are conscious of it or not.
The continued existence of "useless degrees", it could be argued, is due to the way that they have been commodified and marketed to make them more appealing to economic decision makers. Make the Sociology program look more "scientific" and it might survive budget cuts.
It should be clear now that whether or not a BA in English helps "create jobs" or the fact that it is supposedly ideological indoctrination is not what makes it a "useless degree". Furthermore, arguing that liberal democracy depends on the liberal arts tradition won't make a BA in English "useful". Efficiency and bottom-line results are what make something "useful" in today's neoliberal global economy.
Something else that nobody ever seems to consider is that the hard sciences are not necessarily immune to the "useless degree" phenomenon. All it would take would be some governor deciding that, oh, paleontology and quantum mechanics are a waste of resources, and the Geology and Physics departments would be in danger of budget cuts.
I think that the entire debate over "useless degrees" has missed the point.
If you listen to conservatives celebrate and liberals lament the decline of the liberal arts tradition it would be easy to think that status as a formal four-year undergraduate degree program as well as graduate degree programs in accredited higher education institutions is like oxygen to an animal: without it they will die. Has it ever occurred to anybody that, formal degree-program status or no such status, the liberal arts will still be with us? Furthermore, has it ever occurred to anybody that the liberal arts tradition might be BETTER SERVED finding a new home outside of formal higher education?