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Comment by thundergolfer | Hacker News Reader

That 37% of people really needs to be understood as bifurcated though. There is the (smaller) group that do the degrees that lead to high skills and gainful employment (medecine, engineering, finance), and the other (larger) group that are enrolled in mostly cotton-candy degrees (Communications, Business, Media) that lead just to debt.

Paying for the Party is a good book that explores this modern issue.

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I think comms/broadcast degrees often are pointless. But in media, anything web/video and journalism focused was a solid career until very recently. Wages are dropping fast in that field. Social media and phones really took a chunk out of it. It feels like the collapse of newspapers all over again, especially in the TV sector.

Its always surprising when on HN these degrees are considered non desirable and yet every time one of us starts a company we realize we need them.

Let's assume you're telling the truth, how many would be needed? How many social media experts versus engineers? Sales is the real hidden people employer, you'll probably have as many or sales people than engineers, but the fact of the matter is now all degrees are created equal.

I can well imagine "ran a Youtube channel with x,xxx subscribers in High School" being way more valuable for getting into media work than a degree in media would be, which is something that wouldn't have even been possible not that long ago.

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