I Have One of Europe's 'Most Useless' Degrees – This Is How My Life Turned Out

Picking a university degree that will one day make you the most possible money is a stressful proposition. Unfortunately, it’s also a necessary one: learning for learning’s sake is, for most, an impossibility at a time when uni fees are so costly – even for the virtual classes of the COVID-19 era.

Some degrees take this a step further: not only will they probably not get you a job, they seem unlikely to teach you anything useful at all. Take the Stand-Up Comedy MA course at the University of Kent – realistically, what is the point in doing that? Paying a uni thousands of pounds is unlikely to translate into a Netflix special, however much you want it to.

This degree and a number of others – including Rotterdam’s Codart University’s Circus Arts, and the University of Vienna’s Numismatics (the study of coins) – made their way onto our “Most Useless Degrees in Europe” list two years ago. Naturally, we were mean about them without actually speaking to anyone on any of the courses, so to remedy that I caught up with some students who graduated with what we deemed completely useless qualifications.

Andrej, a full time librarian in Serbia, said his course in (you guessed it) Library and Information Sciences at the University of Belgrade was “an unplanned decision, but it sort of planned out my whole life”.

Andrej is enthusiastic about his career, even if the original piece pointed out that there are barely any libraries left in Serbia. “Working in a library and doing what I was educated for is a rare thing nowadays in Serbia,” says Andrej. “But this job is not like most other jobs, in a really good way. It is stress-free and provides a sense of stability and order in this unstable and chaotic time.”

Meanwhile, Ziemowit – who studied Political Science at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University – says the degree really isn’t necessary if you want to pursue a career in politics, a point VICE staffer Pawel Mączewski made in that original article.

“Political science know-how does help, but nowadays you can be 'somebody' in this field regardless of your scientific education,” says Ziemowit. Still, he’s not bitter about his degree, and believes it’s come in handy in his work as a journalist and author.

But does “coming in handy” justify doing that degree? Giacomo, who graduated from the University of Milan’s course, Conservation and Sustainable Development of Mountain Areas, in 2019, agrees with the “useless” label applied to his degree.

He says his graduating class probably didn’t need the degree to pursue their chosen careers, but that doesn’t mean he regrets taking it. The image of the course as “like agricultural studies, but focused on mountain environments [on a campus in] Edolo, a small village at the base of Alta Val Camonica” really does line up with VICE’s take (a course “inspired by a Yogi Bear episode”).

My favourite degree on the original list was a bachelor’s in Circus Arts at Codart University. Dries, a 23-year-old graduate of the course, explains that he chose the programme because “I wanted to be a professional juggler when I was younger, but they told me I’d never get my bachelor's in Circus Arts if I couldn’t make a decent somersault”. He continues: “The bachelor’s in Circus Arts is just like any other form of performance art. Auditions are tough and it’s difficult to get in, just as with dance and theatre academies.”

Dries explains that the course is a mixture of dance, anatomy and entrepreneurship classes. “It was intense, but absolutely worth it,” he says. “The traditional circus is dying, but the Cirque du Soleil is not my final destination. As a contemporary artist, I get booked by programmers for festivals, theatres and cultural centres.”

Emma Pivetta, a lecturer at Barcelona’s School of Design and the EU Business School, says she doesn’t think any degree should be described as “useless”. She feels that more students in Europe are opting into further education not just to get a job, but due to the lack of jobs available. “There’s a tendency to spend time studying and applying for masters and other higher education instead [of applying for jobs,” she explains.

Pivetta says she would “encourage a student to study what they would prefer to learn about […] During your life, you will never stop learning, so do what you like better. Life is a journey. Studying and your career are also a journey.”

Pivetta is right: considering the complicated elitist history of further education, encouraging and inspiring the scholarly pursuit of personal interests just for the fun of it – and not to make money – should really be commended. I guess what I’m saying is: long live the Circus Arts.

Extra interviews conduced by Maud Droste, Vincenzo Ligresti, Mihailo Tesic and Pawel Mac.

@GINATONIC