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human
CMV: People should stop focusing on “useless degrees” and instead focus on the fact that the job market is full of meaningless, arbitrary and unfulfilling jobs

I study a classic useless Liberal Arts degree at a fancy institution and I’ve become very accustomed to the scoffs and jokes about my “unemployable” future. I know. I’ve accepted it. I used to get a lot of anxiety about this stuff, worrying about my life 5 years from now. I used to wonder if there’s something wrong with me for wanting to put a gun to my head after looking at the kind of internships, grad roles and training schemes that are available. Most of them are boring financial services roles, consulting jobs that involve useless administrative tasks, PR work and more.

But then I read some of this book called “Bullshit Jobs” by David Graeber. And it really did encapsulate everything I have secretly believed about the job force for much of my life so far. No matter how many people tell me “smart students will go onto work smart jobs in banking or law or the civil service” I cannot help agreeing with Graeber that most of these jobs actually have close to zero impact on society and even sometimes only have a more negative impact on the world. A lot of them involve tasks that are filled with useless word jumbo, snooze-fest meetings and days where you sit in an office watching YouTube while pretending go to work. 

I remember doing a short consulting work experience thing and thinking the idea of change management seemed like the perfect example of a job that’s been invented just so some pretend-smart person could get paid. 

“When did creativity suddenly mean suffering?” - Graeber

This is where my view on useless degrees come in. Yes I know so many degrees are completely inapplicable to jobs, and cost way too much money. But why does studying something that is ultimately still fascinating and important to some aspect of society - like Classical Civilisations or Anthropology or Film or Literature mean you’re just some dumb pretentious young person who’s wasting your life? I totally understand the more practical importance of STEM degrees but even having a biology degree nowadays will have you struggling to make ends meet, unless you go into finance or marketing or whatever.


EDIT: Just wanna say that I think the fact that people have to pay thousands for some degrees that won’t guarantee a good income to pay back student loans and such, is a huge problem that should be addressed in the future. What I mean is that the actual existence of these degrees or the knowledge you get from them shouldn’t be degraded because the job market’s problems are probably worse.

Also, change management is an example I thought of myself that I now see may be incorrect. But in the actual book Graeber gives many other examples, not change management but mentions titles like “human resources consultant”.
gpt
>change management

It is easy to scoff at "process" jobs as not contributing value. But often those processes were created as a result of lessons paid for in blood. When an airplane crashes because some part of the software wasn't properly tested, we get a new or modified process, so that it is someone's job to ensure that changes are properly designed, documented, and tested. Yeah, when you are the developer who needs to jump through extra hoops, and do paperwork that you think is stupid to satisfy the person in that process job, it is easy to scoff at its very existence. But it likely is there for a reason. Change Management is just such a process job, that can be a really critical part of creating a safe product.
 
That doesn't mean there aren't stupid jobs, or jobs that once served a purpose, but are now obsolete for one reason or another. But we need to be careful about judging jobs we either don't, or only partially understand.