Prospective university students are often excited to be going to university and eager to take advantage of the range of degrees on offer. Nevertheless, there are some degrees that you should think twice about. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue them, but there may be moderate to severe drawbacks that you aren’t aware of. A university degree needs a significant investment of time and money, it’s worthwhile spending at least a few weeks carefully considering the pros and cons.

Although most universities in Australia and New Zealand are public universities they still operate like any other business and seek to maximise revenue and minimise costs. They are happy to sell you a product of limited economic value as long as they make a satisfactory return. Similarly, good quality programmes may be cut if they aren’t generating enough income. For university decision makers educational quality, job outcomes, and other principles like free speech are secondary concerns to making money. More income means bigger salaries for vice-chancellors and other university executive level staff. Australian public universities' vice-chancellors are some of the highest paid in the world, with an average yearly income exceeding one million dollars [1].

Universities will sometimes admit that a degree doesn’t really lead directly to any particular career. Instead, they will talk up the transferable skills that the degree teaches. These are things like:

Yet there are two main problems with this argument. Firstly, there is no evidence that the particular degree being promoted is superior to another degree that allegedly teaches the same transferable skills, and also teaches more specific vocational skills. Secondly, it is questionable how well students really develop these skills. Research from the US, for instance, found that in their first two years at university students showed no improvement in skills such as analytic reasoning, critical thinking and written communication [2]. Universities in Australia and New Zealand have strongly resisted attempts to assess what higher-order cognitive skills graduates have acquired, perhaps due to worries that poor results will lead to funding cuts and questions about the value of particular degrees.

A variation on this argument is the versatility argument. Proponents of this will state that the lack of career specific skills is actually an incredible advantage. Indeed, the degree in question is so versatile that the graduate will excel in almost any profession. No evidence is presented to support this argument though, moreover it isn’t supported by government data which shows graduates of many of these versatile majors earning at the lower end of the income scale.

Some will argue that education is valuable even if it doesn’t deliver any useful skills. This is true in some respects, but university is an expensive, inefficient, and even uninspiring way to get this education. Back in the 20th century, if you wanted to learn about archaeology or art history, you could get a book from a library, but if you wanted to watch lectures you really needed to enrol at university. Now there are numerous courses, in-depth videos, and other sources of information available online for free or low cost. If you don’t like one course, there are many others to try.

In contrast at university there is often a limited selection of courses, some of which are delivered in a lacklustre manner. Moreover since some courses are mandatory, if you don’t like one for some reason, there is no alternative. As a cost-cutting measure, some courses are rarely offered, meaning a very limited selection. To add insult to injury, some universities don’t even deliver in-person lectures, they just offer pre-recorded lectures from staff who may no longer even work there. Why would you pay so much for what might be poor quality content? Remember as well that the number of contact hours is often very limited. It could only be ten to twelve hours per week for a typical arts degree. So you won’t be constantly interacting with various top scholars in the field. Instead, you will be spending most of the time studying independently. You could even take the money you would’ve spent at university and visit some of the great archaeological sites or art museums of the world for yourself.

The idea that everyone should go to university, even if it puts them in debt that will take decades to payoff, just doesn’t make sense. Education has value, but if the degree in question isn’t needed by employers, then this education could be achieved through other means.

As already mentioned, education has worth outside of market value, but obtaining it at university comes at a high cost. This isn’t just the direct costs in terms of fees, which could put the student in decades of debt, but also the opportunity cost. The opportunity cost refers to the lost income from employment and other opportunities you could have pursued if you weren’t busy studying. Obviously the opportunity cost can fluctuate depending on economic conditions.

Consider an Australian student who is studying a major that falls in the communications, society and culture category. The 2026 student contribution amount for a full-time student is A$17,399. A typical semester might have 12 teaching weeks, with approximately 12 contact hours per week. This means the student is paying around A$60 per contact hour. However some of these contact hours are lectures which may not offer much value over what can be watched for free online. So some might argue they should be eliminated from the calculation. If we assume that half the contact hours are lectures and half are some more interactive activity like tutorials or workshops, now the cost per contact hour has doubled to $120. Many of these tutorials aren’t taught by renowned academics, but graduate students. Although this is just one of many possible scenarios, you are spending A$120 / hr to sit in a class with a bunch of other students to be taught by someone without a PhD. It’s a lot of money, and one could argue that if the value of the piece of paper at the end isn’t worth much, then it is not a very good deal.

The obvious elephant in the room is the value of the degree at the end. Some degrees are worth a lot, but others not so much. The declining value of some degrees is due to a number of factors such as an oversupply of generic graduates, as well as employers having doubts about what the degree really signifies. Lowering of academic standards in general, grade inflation, and the rise of the chatGPT graduate all contribute toward scepticism of the value of some degrees. There are graduates that bluff their way through the entire degree using AI, leaving employers doubting what skills they actually possess.

It’s a worthwhile exercise to carefully review the costs and benefits of a degree. Although student loan debt isn’t equivalent to other debt, it still needs to be paid off in most circumstances. A poor initial choice of degree could see a student forced to undertake additional qualifications, some of which could be very expensive.

Prospective students may read criticism of their preferred degree and rush to consult social media or ask a university lecturer. Be careful about listening to current students. They will give well-meaning advice, but haven’t yet tried to build a career or had a chance to reflect in detail on any benefits and drawbacks of the degree. Often they will use a variation on the transferable skills argument. Yet as mentioned, other degrees offer the same generic skills plus additional skills that are directly applicable to certain occupations.

University staff are also not necessarily the best source of advice. They depend on enrolling students in their courses to keep their jobs. It is also quite common for staff to have spent their whole life in academia and therefore lack an accurate understanding of the job market.

If you are going to talk to anyone, try identifying some individuals who graduated with the degree five or more years ago and ask them how useful it was and if they would study the degree again. In general, try to give weight to objective data sources. Too many students fall into the trap of making an early decision and then seeking out evidence that supports that initial decision.

Whenever the topic of particular degrees being less valuable comes up, people are going to get upset. Especially when the discussion concerns one they graduated from or are currently studying. They will point to their own success or the success of someone they know. However career success is due to numerous factors including luck, communication skills, networking skills, problem-solving skills, work ethic, intelligence, personality, planning, continuous learning and so on. Having a particular degree is only one factor that contributes to success. After all, there are many notable university dropouts that have had huge career success. So the fact that a person achieved success with a particular degree, doesn’t mean that degree played any role in their success.

When we talk about the value of a particular degree, we are talking in general terms about how much value that degree offers with all other things being equal. We don’t mean that a particular degree is the sole factor that will determine your destiny.

According to 2023 OECD data over 50% of Australians aged 25 to 64 now have a degree [3]. Due to the large increase in the supply of graduates in recent decades two phenomenon have become evident. The first is a decline in the graduate premium [4]. The graduate premium refers to the lifetime value of having a degree over not having a degree. One study found that 20 percent of graduates would have received higher lifetime earnings by getting a job directly after high school and skipping university [5].

Another issue is credentialism. Employers now ask for a degree when none is really required for the role. This has flow on effects in that jobs that could be done with just a bachelor’s degree now require expensive post graduate qualifications. This means there could be situations where someone feels compelled to go to university despite having no great desire to do so, and not actually needing a degree to perform their intended job.

The strength of the labour market also needs to be considered. When the economy is strong, it is easier to start a career without a degree.

In the past fewer people went to university. This meant that simply having a degree made you stand out in the job market. In addition, university education was often free. Fast-forward to today and large numbers of students go to university and tuition is very expensive. Moreover, knowledge is no longer locked up in universities, there is an abundance of information that can be found online. So costs have gone up, and many of the unique selling points are no longer true. However it’s a complex picture, and some employers demand a degree even when it is not really needed to fulfill the functions of the job.

It’s not always wrong to go to university to pursue an area that you are interested in but which is unlikely to lead to a job. Just be sure it is a conscious decision. Some people fool themselves and think they are going to be the exception and find a job closely related to their degree in fine arts, for example. It’s better to be realistic and come up with a plausible plan that could involve something along the lines of studying a double degree, studying a post graduate conversion course, or planning a career in an area for which no degree is necessary.

In the next few chapters we take a look at some notable degrees you might want to think twice about.

[1] R. Bergami, “Australian Public Universities Vice-Chancellor Salaries and Workforce Casualisation: Ethical Tension?,” THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND TOURISM, p. 130, 2021.

[2] R. Arum and J. Roksa, Academically adrift: Limited learning on college campuses. University of Chicago Press, 2011.

[3] “Population with tertiary education.” https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/population-with-tertiary-education.html .

[4] S. Schwartz, Degree Inflation: Undermining the value of higher education. Centre for Independent Studies., 2023.

[5] M. C. Corliss, A. Daly, and P. Lewis, “Is a university degree still a worthwhile financial investment in Australia?,” Australian Journal of Education, vol. 64, no. 1, pp. 73–90, 2020.