[lordnacho]

Say you have a degree in maths. What jobs could you apply for? Just "Mathematician"?

I think you could do a whole range of things. Anything from quantitative trading to traffic management. Or something that doesn't even require math, like project management.

The advantage of broadness is you have a wider choice about what you do. If one kind of work turns out not to appeal to you, you aren't stuck. That has some economic value as well. If you have the watch industry collapse, you don't have a bunch of watchmakers sitting around on benefits who could be doing something different.

[mseebach]

I suppose the example is poor, then. Food chemist are pretty much trained to do a rather narrow range of jobs, pretty much all called something with "food chemist". A mathematician (and most other academic degrees[1]) isn't really trained to do any particular job at all (except research, I suppose), so they need to cast a wide net. A better example might be a "Java Programmer" not even considering looking at job postings in the .NET section?

1: Plenty of vocational training takes place at universities and have degree-titles attached to them. That doesn't make them academic pursuits. I say this as a polytech-rebranded-as-"university"-trained engineer and I firmly believe that I shouldn't hold a degree that implies that I have an academic education.