General Discussion

and that you don't really need a college degree for. Take Accounting, for example, the pinnacle of "usefulness" in a college degree. "Oh, your daughter is majoring in Philosophy? Haha? Will she be a barista? My son is majoring in Accounting!"

Accounting is a fairly recent invention. It used to be a job you could do if you had a little math sense and decent on the job training. It was called bookkeeping. Generations of Americans up until the 1960s were bookkeepers without a college degree - some without a high school degree! Are there now specialist needs for accounting? Sure. But most accountancy in practice remains little more than a glorified version of the bookkeeping of the 1930s through 1970s, when you could pick it up in semi-apprenticeship on the job.

I would throw most aspects of business degrees and computer science into the same bag. Economics is now about being able to spit out and apply a particular version of capitalist propaganda. Finance is an ethical disaster area. Management is training in conducting reviews, keeping track of compliance training, and firing people. The idea that one needs a four-year degree for any of these activities is an absolute joke. But you do need a degree to curate and run a museum: it's called art history and museum management. You know, barista degrees.

Now, what about the Philosophy major daughter? It's certainly true that you can't be a professional philosopher these days (could you ever?), except in the rapidly shrinking academic humanities, and they're not hiring. It's sad. We will have less interesting books (and films, and music, and art, and architecture). But the myth of the philosophy major never getting a relevant or useful job is simply that, a myth. Many go into law. Other go into business, learning the details of the various trades on the job or in training programs (Goldman used to favor philosophy majors over finance bros for their investment banker training because they were better able to read and analyze texts - that's probably changed, but the principle remains the same). Others go into various other fields, or get a specialist degree postgrad.

And anyway, if the poll didn't show results you all liked, you'd judge its language for what it very obviously is, a clownish push poll.