 All right, liberal arts. No, no, no! All right, liberal arts, humanities, social science degrees have a little bit of a bad reputation. Now I've talked about them in other videos before. Some of them are okay, and if you have a good plan going in, you can make them work for you. Sometimes. They're also some of the most interesting subjects as well, so I can see why so many people like them. But the truth is, from a personal finance perspective, many, many liberal arts degrees are completely useless. But don't start crying yet. Whenever I point this out, people get triggered. They dislike my video thousands of times. They leave hundreds of hate comments. But the truth is, with many of these degrees, they're so bad that you will actually be less likely to achieve your goals once you've gotten the degree because of the fact that you're in so much student loan debt and because of the fact that you wasted four years of your life. You would have been better off if you just didn't go to college at all and then you tried to pursue it in a different way, like starting a YouTube channel or a blog or a podcast or something like that. But in this video, I'm going to talk about liberal arts degrees that are so bad that I don't believe that you'll be able to get through this video without cringing. Yeah, cringing hard. And one cringe equals one like. Don't forget to smash the like button. Here we go. Now starting out, number 10 on the list is going to be history. Now, in all fairness, this one ranks 412 out of 835 possible degrees, and it's probably my favorite subject. One of my biggest passions in the entire world, I absolutely love history. And it looks like a lot of other people have the same passion as well. There's over 35,000 people every single year that graduate with a history degree. And that's just here in the US. Now, the reason I decided to not major in this one and instead just keep it as a hobby and maybe take a few extra classes here and there is because the numbers just weren't very good in terms of getting a job and making a stable income. There's not that many jobs out there and the few that are don't pay very well. Now, ironically, I decided to go a completely different route and I get to spend as much time as I want listening to the Dan Carlin podcast, watching different YouTube history channels here, you know, looking at the badass of the week blog. And I don't have to do any of the boring stuff like memorizing dates or writing essays about parts of history that I'm just not interested in. I had a roommate back in college who got a history degree. And ironically, I spend more time studying and enjoying history than he does now. So this is a great example of an overrated degree and I'm so glad that 17 year old Shane was smart enough to see that. He was a dumb ass in many ways, but I do have to give him credit there. Number nine on the list, I decided to group these together. It's going to be anthropology and archaeology. Now I'm not going to go over the numbers on these. They're both really bad archaeology is a little bit worse. So I'll just tell you the rankings instead. It's going to be 592 for anthropology and 651 for archaeology. And by the way, looking up the numbers on all of these different degrees, they're pretty bad in the first place, but they're actually worse than what's shown on a lot of the sites because of the fact that those are people who actually report their income. Many people who get liberal arts and arts degrees end up jobless and so they don't have any income to report. That makes the numbers even worse. And out of all those people, how many of them are working as an archaeologist or an anthropologist? Pretty much none. And that's a fact. Number eight on the list is going to be communications. And this is one of the most overrated degrees out there. This one ranks 438 out of 835 possible degrees on pay scale. Now there's 37 different types of communication related degrees out there and 88,000 people graduate with these different types of degrees every single year. It's one of the most popular degrees. This is the major that football players and basketball players choose just because it has the reputation of being really easy. But your communication sucks in your videos, Shane. Number seven on the list is going to be recreation and leisure studies. Now guys, the hardest part about making videos like this is choosing which ones to put in here because there's so many degrees I found that were just awful. Recreation and leisure studies, this is where you study how to be a parks and recreation employee, I guess. I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about the miserable screwed up world of local government. Like I try to go through the thought process when I'm making these videos of people who major in these degrees to try to figure out like where they're coming from and better understand. It's like, I like recreation. I like relaxing. Let's spend $80,000 for someone to teach me how to have fun. This one, it's just painful. I remember when I was responding to some comments and I tried to respond to every single comment, you guys know that and someone posted a story about their aunt. They said that their aunt majored in this and she's making really good money and she's happy with her job. And I talked to this guy because I was interested. I wanted to hear his side of the story and he admitted that this is the exception of the rule and his aunt probably got really, really lucky. You have to realize that exceptions to the rule actually prove the rule itself. People love to focus on exceptions and they all think that it's going to turn out well for them. And I know I sound like a boomer here telling you to not get these degrees. But seriously, if you want to make a living from studying stuff like this, just start a YouTube channel, start a podcast or a blog. There's no need for you to spend four years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars to have someone teach you how to Netflix and chill. Number six on the list is going to be early childhood education. You hear that? The Karens are coming to cancel me. So I felt bad about ranking this one low. I mean, technically it's the second worst on the entire list. It ranks 831 out of 835 possible degrees. That's really, really bad. Now I said I wasn't going to show the numbers, but just to give you guys some perspective here, they start off around $33,500 a year in the first five years. And then mid-career pay is going to be $43,000 a year. Now these numbers might be a little bit over inflated because again, this is survey data. This is the people who respond. And many of the people who respond do have jobs, but there's probably a lot of them that don't. So that's going to skew the data a little bit, probably a little higher than it actually is in reality. But BLS, on the other hand, says that preschool teachers in general make around $30,000 a year. And you don't even need a bachelor's degree to get into this. All you need is an associate's. Now BLS also says that the average salary of all workers in the U.S., this is people with or without degrees, is around $50,000 a year. So there is a significant amount of people getting a four-year degree going $40,000 in debt on average in order to earn only $30,000 a year when you don't even need to have a bachelor's to get into that job in the first place. Now I always recommend on this channel that you try to go for a job where you can realistically expect to make around $75,000 a year. And the reason for this is because studies have shown that your happiness increases up to $75,000 a year and then it doesn't really increase after that. So up to a certain point, it absolutely does increase your happiness. But beyond that point, it kind of gets saturated and it doesn't really matter all that much. So in my opinion, you should try to go for at least $75,000 a year in order to maximize your happiness. Now that's all I'm going to say about that, but the next one is going to be a different type of education degree, which is history teacher education. Now unfortunately, education degrees on their own don't pay very well. Education on its own ranks $691 out of 835 possible degrees. When you get a degree like education, it's already specific enough. I mean, you pretty much know what kind of career you're going to go into. You're probably going to become a teacher. So there's no need for you to get any more specific than that. However, they offer a ton of degrees that are extremely tailored to certain types of teaching. This is one example, history teacher education. It ranks 807 out of 835 possible degrees. Now, I don't necessarily agree with this. I think they probably should be paying teachers much better than they are. They're teaching people who are going to be the future of our country and they should probably be well compensated for that. But when I see people getting degrees like this where it's like a history teacher education, I'm not surprised at all that it ranks so low. And this whole list could honestly have been made up of degrees just like this. I mean, check these out. All of these specific education degrees rank extremely low in the 700s and the 800s. And this is why you see education being the third most regretted degree in surveys by NCES. The reason cited being basically everything, low pay, low job satisfaction, and not very many opportunities for advancement. So unfortunately, I think that you should avoid education. But if you are going to go into education, don't get too specific. Number four on the list is going to be ministry. All right. So this is a fun one. I could have put a bunch of different religious related degrees on there, but I decided to go with this one. Now, I want to make one thing very clear. I don't have a problem with anyone's religion. Here's the point I'm trying to make. These thirsty ass colleges will take anything at all that you are passionate about. And religion is one of the, you know, biggest, most important things in people's lives. And then they'll make it into a degree by slapping a studies on it or a education or something along those lines. Oh, you're passionate about having fun. You should do a recreation and leisure studies degree. Oh, you like music. You should do a music degree. Do you enjoy baking and making desserts? Oh, you should do a baking and pastry art degree. Now, religion just happens to be a really good example of that for a lot of people. Religion is the most important thing in their life. And there's nothing wrong with that. I respect that. You can spend as much time as you want, reading it or studying it. If you want to go to church or, you know, different types of worship is seven days a week, then you should do that. That's great. But when it comes to investing four years of your life and going $40,000 in debt on average, you got to make a better choice because the numbers just don't make sense. Now, people in the comments section have pointed out, Hey, look at those television preachers. They're making millions and millions of dollars a year. And believe it or not, there's one preacher who's worth over Okay, it finally stopped. And believe it or not, there's one preacher who's worth over $700 million. And I guess that's where the donations to all these televangelists are going. But that's none of my business. Now, of course, Kenneth Copeland did not get a religious studies degree himself. But what he did do is he opened a school where you can give him money for you to get a degree. I mean, you can't even make this stuff up, guys. I looked up like most of the top televangelists, you know, the TV preachers out there, none of them have a religious studies degree. Joel Austin. Nope. Creflo Dollar. Nope. How about our lady preachers like Joyce Meyer? A lot of these preachers that I looked up didn't even go to college at all. And they're making millions of dollars a year. I think you guys see the point here, if you're passionate about religion and all that sort of thing, I have respect for that. You don't need to go to college in order to make a living from it. Number three on the list is going to be legal assistance studies. This one ranks 805 out of 835 on the list. And this is another example of a completely unnecessary degree. According to BLS, to become a legal assistant, you need to get either an associate's degree or some sort of certificate. And this is all so easy to look up. It takes about 30 seconds. There's no reason to get a bachelor's degree in order to get into this line of work. But I guess people think that their stock will go up if they study it in a formal setting. They'll be more likely to get a job. There's a lot of degrees out there like this. Another one is the criminal justice degree. People watch CSI, criminal minds, all kinds of stuff like that on TV. And it gets them really excited to go get a criminal justice degree. They think getting this degree will help them become a detective. But in reality, most police officers, almost all the positions you do not need to get a criminal justice degree for. In fact, in many positions, you don't need to get any college degree at all. That's why it's so important for you to do your research before you commit so much time and money to going to college. Number two on the list is going to be outdoor education. Now, I was confused by what this degree even is, so I had to look it up. So what is the purpose of an outdoor education degree? Let's read about it. Use of the outdoors makes a major contribution to physical and environmental education and enhances many other curriculum areas. It contributes to personal growth and social awareness and develops skills for life in a world of work. Qualities such as a sense of responsibility and a purpose in life are nurtured. Okay, so that's a great example of saying absolutely nothing by saying a lot. So you're telling me that I should spend four years of my life and go $40,000 in debt in order to learn how to have a sense of responsibility? And how is the outdoors going to do that to me? I just, I don't get it. You should learn to have a sense of responsibility no matter what direction that you go in your life. You don't need to go to college in order to learn that. This degree makes no sense whatsoever. Like, imagine a boss or a hiring manager sees this on a resume. What do you think that they're going to think? How is this degree going to help them to grow their business or, you know, improve the company? Now, this one actually ranked worst on the entire list, 832 out of 835 possible degrees. But there's one degree that I put as even worse. Number one on the list is going to be recreation therapy. Okay, guys. I'm, I'm getting ahead of it. Give me a moment. Give me a moment. Five minutes later. This is where the whole, you know, follow your passions thing that you hear everyone say. This is where it just becomes so obvious that just how, how stupid that is. Sure, this would be a cool class for you to take if you needed to fill up your schedule. If you're really passionate about it, you could maybe even minor in it and take a bunch of different classes. But why would anyone major in this one? Everyone knows that doing things that are fun and things that you're passionate about is going to be good for you. And in that sense, it's a good form of therapy, I guess you could call it. But you could call just about anything therapy. If you really enjoyed doing something, you should do it more often. Why does anyone need to go to four years of school in order to learn how to do this? Even if you want to teach people how to have fun as therapy, like you want to be a life coach or something, you don't need to go to college for that. There's just not that much of a demand out there for you to justify that much of an investment. 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