'Is there no such thing as a "useful" degree anymore?': Reddit debates whether majors still matter in today's job market

A post on Reddit’s r/CollegeMajors has raised a question that a lot of students and recent graduates are quietly sitting with: if the subreddits for engineering, finance, accounting, and data analytics are just as full of people who can’t find jobs as the subreddits for liberal arts degrees, does the concept of a “useful” degree even mean anything anymore?

The original poster noted the irony clearly: liberal arts students get endlessly mocked for picking degrees with no direct job market application, but scroll through the communities for supposedly practical fields and the complaints look nearly identical.

The Reddit problem

The most consistent theme across the thread was a pushback on using Reddit job market posts as a reliable source of data about anything.

“Every sub complains or spells disaster about this and that. That’s what gets engagement. Posts detailing successes are ignored or clowned on,” one commenter pointed out, reminding that the economics of online engagement heavily favour negative experiences over positive ones.

Another framed it differently: “I think Reddit is a biased sample. Think of it like… most people don’t call customer service to talk about how great the product or service is, it’s usually when they are experiencing problems. I think most who have a ‘useful’ degree are doing okay and are too busy living life to bother posting on Reddit.”

It’s a point worth sitting with. The person who graduated with an engineering degree, found a job within three months, and is now getting on with their career is not on r/engineering complaining about the job market. The person who is six months out and still searching very much is.

The standard of “useful” matters

One commenter challenged the premise of the original question directly, arguing that the bar being applied was unreasonably high.

“If your standard for useful is an absolute 100% guarantee that even the worst students and job applicants in that field get a job, then I think you need to re-evaluate your standard for useful because that strikes me as a useless standard. Yes, there are some people struggling for work in every field. How many, to what degree, and how likely they are to post about it on Reddit varies by field.”

It’s a fair assessment; no degree, in any field and in any era, has ever guaranteed employment for every graduate regardless of performance, effort, or circumstances. The question isn’t whether some engineering graduates can’t find work; it’s whether engineering graduates find work at a meaningfully higher rate than other fields. That question can’t be answered by scrolling a subreddit.

What actually determines outcomes

Several commenters shifted the conversation away from the degree itself and toward what graduates do with it.

“A lot of this falls on not interning or using the networking college provides. Most kids don’t work at all until they are out of college and aren’t as social as in the past with building connections,” one user wrote, pointing to internships and professional networks as factors that often matter more than the specific major on a diploma.

Another made a similar point from a different angle: “People can’t get jobs for a variety of reasons, there’s no guarantee any degree will land you a job if you have poor grades or poor work ethics.”

Read related: ‘At my wit’s end’: Broadcasting graduate’s Reddit cry for help exposes the brutal reality of today’s job market

So is there still such a thing as a useful degree?

The thread doesn’t arrive at a clean answer, and it probably can’t. The honest picture is somewhere between the doom of degree-specific subreddits and the optimism of university marketing materials.

Certain degrees still open doors that others don't, and certain fields still hire at higher rates than others. But the gap between a “useful” and “useless” degree has narrowed considerably in a market where even strong credentials don’t guarantee a callback, where hiring processes can drag on for months, and where the sheer volume of applicants means qualified people regularly get filtered out before a human ever sees their resume.

What the thread makes clear is that a degree, useful or otherwise, is now closer to a necessary condition than a sufficient one. It gets you in the pool. Whether you get the job depends on a lot of other things that Reddit rarely talks about: internships, networks, grades, communication skills, timing, and sometimes just luck.

Read also: ‘The job market isn’t even a market anymore’: Reddit discusses ‘entry-level’ hiring in 2026