Every few years, the debate resurfaces: Are some university degrees useless? It is a provocative question that invariably generates headlines, public outrage, and anxious conversations among parents and students. Yet, while the question is simple, the answer is anything but.
Recent comments by public figures have once again reignited this debate. Understandably, concerns about graduate unemployment, skills shortages, and the return on investment in higher education deserve serious discussion. However, reducing the issue to the claim that certain degrees are “useless” oversimplifies one of the most complex relationships in modern society, the relationship between education, labour markets, public policy, and economic development.
There is, in truth, no such thing as a useless degree. There are degrees whose labour market demand fluctuates. There are programmes that require reform. There are universities that must do more to prepare graduates for changing economies. But these realities are fundamentally different from declaring an entire academic discipline devoid of value. The distinction is important.
Society Often Creates the Outcomes It Later Criticises
Across much of the world, the Humanities and Social Sciences have experienced declining enrolments and reduced public investment. Governments increasingly prioritise Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines to drive innovation, industrialisation and technological competitiveness. Large corporations, philanthropic foundations and research endowments similarly channel billions of dollars into engineering, biotechnology, artificial intelligence and computing. These investment choices inevitably influence labour market demand. Where funding flows, opportunities often follow.
When governments finance more engineering programmes, industries recruit more engineers. When research funding overwhelmingly supports technology, technology sectors naturally expand. It therefore becomes misleading to argue that disciplines receiving comparatively less investment are inherently “useless”. More accurately, it is society has chosen to invest differently.The labour market is shaped as much by policy and economic priorities as it is by the intrinsic value of academic disciplines.
Employers Rarely Recruit According to Public Stereotypes
Perhaps the strongest rebuttal to the “useless degree” narrative comes from employers themselves. Every year, leading global employers, including Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG, McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Company, recruit graduates from remarkably diverse academic backgrounds. Historians become consultants. Philosophers become investment bankers. Psychologists become data analysts. Engineers move into corporate finance.Law graduates become entrepreneurs. Literature graduates enter diplomacy and public policy.
These organisations are not confused about what they are doing. Rather, they recognise an enduring truth: university education develops intellectual agility, analytical reasoning, communication, research capability, judgement and the ability to solve unfamiliar problems. Except in professions requiring statutory licensing, such as medicine, dentistry, architecture or certain branches of engineering, many employers recruit not simply for technical knowledge but for learning potential. As recruiters often say, they hire for aptitude and train for application.
Knowledge Has Never Been More Interdisciplinary
The assumption that academic disciplines exist in isolation no longer reflects the reality of scholarship or professional practice. Take sociology. Many people incorrectly assume sociology has little relevance beyond academia. Yet sociological theories underpin organisationalbehaviour, consumer research, behavioural finance, public administration, leadership studies, human resource management, development economics and corporate governance.
This interdisciplinary influence is reflected in academic publishing. Prestigious journals such as the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology and the Annual Review of Sociology rank among the world’s most influential scholarly publications and are widely cited across leading business schools. Their prominence demonstrates that disciplinary boundaries have become increasingly porous.
The world’s greatest challenges, climate change, financial regulation, artificial intelligence, migration, public health, democratic governance and sustainable development, cannot be addressed by one discipline acting alone. Economists increasingly collaborate with psychologists. Computer scientists work alongside ethicists. Engineers partner with public policy experts. Public health specialists depend on anthropologists and sociologists. Interdisciplinarity is no longer an academic slogan, it is rapidly becoming the defining characteristic of twenty-first century knowledge production.
Specialisation Produces Transferable Expertise
Consider a doctoral researcher within history as a discipline examining the history of gold currency systems in colonial Ghana. Another researches public health delivery in rural colonial Ghana. At first glance, both appear highly specialised. Yet each develops sophisticated competencies in research design, evidence synthesis, critical analysis, statistical interpretation, project management, communication and problem-solving. These capabilities readily translate into careers in policy, finance, consulting, international development, healthcare management, central banking and academia. The title of a degree rarely captures the breadth of the intellectual training behind it. This is precisely why many employers increasingly assess competencies rather than academic labels.
Experience Often Challenges Conventional Wisdom
Throughout my professional experience in recruitment and talent assessment, I have consistently observed graduates succeeding well beyond the boundaries of their original disciplines.Engineers frequently distinguish themselves in investment banking, quantitative finance, operational risk and consulting because engineering cultivates structured thinking, precision and systems analysis.
Equally, graduates in philosophy often excel in strategic consulting because they are trained to construct rigorous arguments, interrogate assumptions and solve ambiguous problems. History graduates frequently demonstrate exceptional research capability and policy judgement.Psychology graduates thrive in behavioural analytics, marketing and organisational development.The pattern is unmistakable. Academic discipline shapes the starting point of one’s career, but it does not determine its destination.
The Evidence Is More Nuanced Than Popular Debate
International evidence certainly shows that graduate outcomes differ by subject. Studies from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Economic Forum and higher education researchers consistently demonstrate differences in earnings, employment rates and occupational mobility across disciplines.
However, they also show that graduate success depends upon far more than subject choice alone, For instance: Institutional quality matters, Work experience matters, Internships matter, Digital literacy matters, Professional networks matter, Geographical mobility matters, Postgraduate qualifications matter, and above all, Economic cycles matter.
The future labour market itself continues to evolve. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report identifies analytical thinking, resilience, creativity, leadership, collaboration and lifelong learning among the most sought-after capabilities by employers worldwide. These are precisely the competencies cultivated across a broad spectrum of university disciplines, not exclusively within STEM fields. The debate, therefore, is not between useful and useless degrees. It is between narrow and broad understandings of what universities are designed to achieve.
Revisiting Plato
Long before employability rankings, graduate salary surveys and global university league tables, Plato offered a conception of higher education that remains remarkably relevant. In The Republic, education is presented not merely as vocational preparation but as the cultivation of reason, wisdom, ethical judgement and informed citizenship. Universities were conceived as institutions that expand human understanding, challenge prevailing assumptions and prepare individuals to contribute meaningfully to society. That mission has not become obsolete simply because labour markets have become more competitive.
Indeed, in an era shaped by artificial intelligence, automation and rapidly changing careers, the capacity to think critically, learn continuously and adapt across disciplines may prove more valuable than ever.
A Better Conversation
None of this suggests that universities should resist reform. Curricula must evolve. Institutions must strengthen links with industry. Governments should demand accountability for graduate outcomes. Students deserve transparent information about employment prospects and career pathways. These are necessary reforms. But we should resist the temptation to dismiss entire disciplines through sweeping generalisations. Such claims are unsupported by the realities of modern recruitment, inconsistent with the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of knowledge, and disconnected from how leading employers identify and develop talent.
Perhaps, then, the debate has been framed incorrectly from the outset. The real question is not whether some degrees are useless. It is whether we have become too narrow in defining what usefulness truly means.
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The writer Sharif Mahmud Khalid is An Economic Advisor to the Vice President, An Associate Professor of Accounting and Finance, A Fellow of Royal Society of Arts; and a Senior Fellow of the Higer Education Academy, UK.
