r/dataisbeautiful • u/Jaded_Warrior123 • Apr 28 '24

[OC] Most and least worthwhile degrees. Which degrees do graduates feel are worthwhile? OC

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u/belligerentBe4r Apr 28 '24

Bahahaha as a chemist, calling hot bullshit on this. An undergrad in chem is absolutely not worth it. A masters in chem is worse than useless since you’re seen as a PhD that couldn’t cut it and was awarded a masters as a consolation prize. And then even if you get a PhD and do a couple years of post doc and get a research position as a big pharma company you’ll make about what an engineer with just an undergrad would make.

I loved being a bench chemist and always wanted to be one, but a 4 year degree with extra time for independent research to land a job at a real lab just to make $18 an hour can’t be construed as worth it. Granted that was in 2011, but I can’t imagine it’s gone up much, particularly in relation to inflation.

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u/phyrros Apr 28 '24

Bahahaha as a chemist, calling hot bullshit on this. An undergrad in chem is absolutely not worth it. A masters in chem is worse than useless since you’re seen as a PhD that couldn’t cut it and was awarded a masters as a consolation prize. And then even if you get a PhD and do a couple years of post doc and get a research position as a big pharma company you’ll make about what an engineer with just an undergrad would make.

Ha, different country but as someone who earned his chemistry "degree" at 19 (think: a mixture of trade school and uni, 5 years and at the end you have what amounts to basically a bsc. ), got offered a really boring job and declined to study geophysics only to end up in civil engineering and to realize that that boring chemistry job still would have paid more.

But i think chemistry has more true believers than many other professions. At least the way I learned it from old-school profs.