[ohfunkyeah]

Degrees and grades are a big part of the problem because they are treated as currency to get a job. Degrees are like the Microsoft points system. I want a job in field XYZ. Well to get that you have to buy 256 credits. But, but, it looks like the job really only requires 120 credits. Too bad you have to buy 256. Ok, fine... WTF, part of the 120 credits have absolutely no relevance to the thing I want to do. Yeah, well you still need to take them.

[kazinator]

All university credits are relevant to that job, even those humanities courses and whatever. Credits directly relevant to the job skills are more like vocational training; whereas university is supposed to be about education.

Also, one reason some jobs prefer applicants with degrees is because university completion shows that you have some ambition and willingness to work hard toward a goal that is several years away, in the face of deadlines and stress, and possibly financial risk also. They know you've pulled a few all-nighters to get through.

In other words, you're gone through a pretty tough four year (or more) project: to produce a degreed version of yourself.

That degree shows that you can work, even if you don't have employment experience.

[ohfunkyeah]

One can say that all university credits are relevant to any job but only in the most general sense. Certainly you wouldn't advocate 8 years of general education before getting into degree specific education so the amount is at the very least arbitrary.

Yeah you are probably right about ambition as a general filter too. But the point remains that universities take advantage of this. They know full-well that plenty of students are there to get a job and they can and do milk this.

Issuing degrees is not part of Universities being "about education". Degrees are an arbitrary milestone, that can be received after completing a nearly arbitrary set of classes, that in-turn have taught an arbitrary set of lessons. The fact that Universities have coalesced around issuing degrees of the same type without ensuring their curriculums match further makes the degrees aribitrary.

[Fomite]

Some of the most valuable things I learned, and have done good things for my career, were in those "unrelated" 120 credits.