Basic Trope: A college major that has few post-college job prospects and/or is not respected by mainstream society.
- Straight: Alice majored in women's studies at Trope State University. After graduation, she finds that she can't work anywhere but at Burger Fool for minimum wage.
- Exaggerated: Alice majored in Namekian Women's Studies.
- Downplayed: I Minored in Tropology
- Justified:
- Alice is so well-off financially and well-connected, that it doesn't matter what she majors in, or even if she goes to school at all.
- Alice is going for an MRS Degree.
- Alice is hoping to be a professor, an historian, or something along those lines.
- Alice is going to college during a time (say, The '60s) when just having a degree at all was impressive, no matter what that degree was in.
- Alice chose a major that she is sincerely interested in. It's not really her fault that the society she lives in doesn't regard specialists in this sphere highly; and, due to financial shortage, she cannot just emigrate to a place where her degree would be in demand right away.
- Alice majored in Mechanical Calculator Design just before digital calculators took off.
- They didn't teach Alice how to get a job in her field at college.
- Inverted:
- Alice is a biology major, and finds herself working at Burger Fool for minimum wage after graduation.
- Alice is a business major, but her peers are hard on her for not having an even more lucrative job.
- Subverted:
- Alice chooses a more "useful" major, or goes to trade school instead of traditional college.
- Alice changes her major in her sophomore year.
- Alice does get a well-paying job after college, even though she has a women's studies major.
- Alice takes a more "useful" Master's degree course after completing her women's studies major.
- Alice has a humanities course as a requirement for graduation.
- Alice is working at Burger Fool because she owns the place.
- Alice impulsively changes to a STEM major, thinking that she's going from an "easy A" to easy money.
- Alice learns that it's not her degree that's keeping her from finding work, she just plain sucks.
- Alice learns that it's not her degree, but discrimination, that's keeping her from finding work.
- Double Subverted:
- Regardless, she still has trouble finding meaningful work after college.
- She keeps women's studies as a minor or as a second major.
- Alice had to be a self-starter or attend graduate school before she could find anything meaningful. For example, becoming a professor.
- The class is in something of little real-world value, and no relevance to any of her other classes, such as art history.
- ...because it's either a Family Business she was next in line to run or someone had to pull some serious strings to get her in that position.
- Unlike with Women's Studies, Alice had no aptitude for the subject and bombed. Now she's in debt and still didn't learn anything useful.
- Parodied: The university's prospectus states exactly how useless the degree is.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice does find a job at art museum to use her 18th-century Ugandan Art degree... Only to find that the museum needed someone with a 19th-century Ugandan art degree... But she does well at the job anyway.
- Averted:
- Alice majors in something more "marketable", such as biotech.
- Rather than attending college or grad school, Alice enters a trade school to land a secure if not very exciting blue-collar job.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Hey, don't complain about not being able to find a job! You're the one that chose a stupid major!"
- Invoked: Alice enters college with an undeclared major, and takes core humanities courses.
- Exploited: Despite her degree making less money than that of her other colleagues, Alice managed to secure herself with some sort of a stable job since the "useless" market she could enter had much less competition.
- Defied:
- Alice chooses something with better career prospects.
- Alice's employer chooses her because they reason that someone with a Literature degree will be able to read and write well, which the employer believes is a vital skill for their organization.
- Discussed: "You'll be living on ramen packets for the rest of your life if you get this degree, you know."
- Conversed: "I don't think I've ever seen Alice doing anything related to her Women's Studies degree."
- Implied:
- Alice's graduation regalia is hanging next to her Burger Fool uniform.
- Alice is a temperamental Burger Fool employee who mentions attending college.
- Alice's job is unknown, but she appears depressed at college reunion.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice remains in debt for a long time because her degree does not allow her to get a job beyond minimum wage.
- Alice can't guarantee getting a job while she's still in college. All the profitable degrees are practically worthless because the job market is saturated with them, meaning she'll be just one more drop in the bucket. All the unmarketable degrees make much less cash—and she doesn't know which ones will suddenly be relevant in the future so everyone can snatch those up too. The middle-of-the-road professions don't get respect from either school of thought, and she can't just quit because then she'd be seen as a failure for dropping out; no matter what she does, she's practically screwed in all directions.
- Alice has to choose: get a degree in a subject she excels at with low pay, or graduate in a subject she's terrible at but has higher prospects. Either way, she's not going to make much money.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice manages to get around her degree's limitations by applying what she learned to get hired for more lucrative ventures, thus earning her enough money to get out of debt.
- Rather than just considering how much money or status she's going to get from her degree, Alice instead chooses her major by playing to her strengths; after all, any degree is worthless if they're no good at using it.
- Played for Drama: Her failed career leaves Alice depressed.
- Played for Horror: Enraged and humiliated, Alice becomes a Serial Killer targeting her former classmates with more lucrative careers.
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