ITT: we discuss useful and useless majors

Your post actually made me think. It does seem suspicious that academia focuses so heavily on culture and "privilege" as the root of inequality instead of material resources.

I wrote a little on this point last year, if you're interested:
bunkermag.org/social-justice-social-democracy-reactionary-bonnie-clyde/

How bad does a degree have to be before the only defense for it is to point out that it qualifies as a degree?

You can replace the word "sociology" with "comedy" and "sociologist" with "clown", and the "most employers don't care what you major in" argument works just as well.

>About to graduate with masters in materials
>Undergrad in chemE
>2 years undergrad research
>1 year in industry while doing masters
>High GPAs for both degrees
>Applied for 30 jobs so far
>Only one response, it was a rejection

I feel like I got memed hard

materials is one of the biggest fields right now my man. what did you study in grad school? specific field?

Materials engineering. Did work in polymers and semiconductors.

The problem isn't a lack of jobs, it's a lack of jobs for new grads. There's tons of shit out there for people with 5+ years in industry, but there's jack shit for new grads.

The few jobs for new grads get slammed with applicants. I've seen upwards of 700 applications for a single job. Which just encourages employers to treat applicants like a completely disposable resource.

I stopped reading after the first paragraph. Can't stand overly shit like that. Get to the fucking point.

Im sorry man, really. I'm in chemistry and materials doing electrochemical materials for batteries, so not that far away. Im doing a PhD but im not sure how much different that will be.

hope everything works out for you

There is no point it gets to
It just dodges the question in such a way that implies "idk man"

everyone have their own specific job on this world, like who gives the fuck what are the point in shaming other majors. are you insecure?

imagine it as a chain and the world is a gear, you can't complete a complete revolution if one of the link is disabled...

without A, you can't complete the alphabet,
without the Sun how can you grow

it doesn't matter what major you have,
what matters is where you're happy
and contented

if you based your life on money then you must be a fucking retard,

OP stop caring about what others are majoring in and stop aligning so hard with what you're majoring in. i'm sure you're a multidimensional person and not just a frothing STEM shitlord

except that everyone and everything would be fine without a bachelor degree in sociology. arguably they would be better off even without their debtgree.

>Nice try, but sociology is actually bullshit for people who take western academia's repudiation of Marx and dogmatic insistence on cultural, not material, factors being fundamental to society as gospel.

I'm not in the soft sciences, or even sociology, but I've read a ton on it and know many others in the field, personally. This is absolutely not the case. I suggest you actually read some modern sociological literature on the topic. Oftentimes, class and class consciousness has been incorporated into many of the current sociological models. I've yet to see one completely omit or, even more strangely, repudiate it. Furthermore, a great deal of modern sociological thought is very obviously extensions of Marxist thought, such as the very concept of "consciousness" in a Marxist sense being applied and developed over the years.

The paragraph before the last one is pretty redpilled desu

Yes, I love how they talk about "assuming that you are a responsible person" and "presumed responsibility".
They don't even give enough of a fuck to tell the student that they will become such a person, they openly admit that this course isn't even helping them grow as a person according to the Humboldtian education ideal. They're whole point is that you can get smashed every weekend and people will still hire you.

That's their decision though, right? Does it have a tangible effect on you? You might argue that it's less competition for your pursuits

Actually it does. The cost of college goes up if more people go. Supply and demand

hah, if you want the reasoning behind increasing tuition, I'd look elsewhere. and I have a feeling that your problem is more along ideological lines than anything. you shoulda just gone to a tech school

>Money
>useful
Lmao WRONG

Marx was an influential thinker in the sense that Hegel was, but we'd hardly consider everything Hegel's influenced as "Hegelian." It looks much more like a bargain basement mix-and-match of supposedly Marxist and "Marx-inspired" concepts and ideas divorced from the unifying framework that gave them meaning in the first place, than it does any real "development" (kek) or "extension" of them. Historical materialism was abandoned as early as the Frankfurt School.
I mean, intersectionality "incorporates class," but where class has been redefined to refer to a set of sociological attitudes about income, consumption and lifestyle, and not one's objective relation to the means of production - and where it is one part of a system of autonomous "intersecting" cultural phenomena and not the material conditions fundamental to any subjectivized discrimination. "Consciousness," too, specifically refers to the contradiction between one's political activity/identification and real class interests, and by extension the selective pressures on the bourgeoisie to act more according to class interests or take a competitive disadvantage, so that over time the bourgeoisie comes to consist of "class conscious" people - rather than some mystified hunt for "self-actualization." I see a lot of crass representations of things stand in for the things themselves, and so on.
It hardly bears mentioning, but dominant postmodern currents, with their "incredulity towards all meta-narratives" (including any attempts to make a science of history) are explicitly anti-Marxist in this sense.

I'd point you to pic related, but for some reason the author decided to couch much of his argument in polemics against some no-name political rivals, so it can be a little grating and unfocused. The essay critiquing Tom Rockmore's characterization of Marx is nice though, and can be shock treatment for those who "develop" Marx ideas without understanding Marx.

Plenty of people get fucked up on the weekends and have high paying jobs.

This really frustrates me as an economics major

Studying society in the context resource production and distribution is a very deep and very fascinating vein of literature fundamental to understanding civilization, but it's only ever in the realm of economics and ecology that it's explored

Just because a profession makes a certain amount of money, doesn't mean there is any room for you in it.

ospe.on.ca/public/documents/advocacy/2015-crisis-in-engineering-labour-market.pdf

>Happening in Ontario, Canada.
>2/3 of engineering degree holders do not work in engineering.

Help me pls.

I fell for the "do what you like" meme, but it's not too late to turn my major around to STEM.

however, browsing these types of threads on /g/ and Veeky Forums give me the impression that it is a cutthroat, "only connections matter" kind of labour market.

Is there any non-medical degree that will guarantee employment?