Journalism is a crappy field to try to get into, but the same source, the Daily Beast, regards as “useless degrees” Chemistry, and Mechanical Engineering.
Actually they list mechanical engineering technology and not mechanical engineering. They are very different animals, just the same color.
I don't know about chemistry but mechanical engineering has changed drastically since I got my degree in 1967. The US auto industry was riding high, aerospace was a hot job market and the race to the moon was in full swing. Computers were moving out of the "ivory tower" and showing up on desk tops, supplanting bamboo slide-rules and drafting boards.
By 1970, MBAs had replaced the individual entrepreneurs who started many of the key industries that were the core of American enterprise. So the Harvard crowd took over with no understanding of the businesses they were managing, because after all management is management, whatever. So if you can run a textile factory, you can run a steel mill, right?
Merger mania followed soon after because corporate goals established a demand for exponential growth. Growing at 12% is easy when you go from a million in net billed sales to two million in eight years. It's easy to do with internal expansion, not possible when you are trying to go from 100 million to 200 million in the same eight years. So the MBAs decide to buy out the smaller fish. Any smaller fish, it doesn't what they manufacture as long as they make money. They fund the acquisitions by milking their "cash cows" dry. (the businesses they started with in the first place...) This results in conglomerates that combine anything from making airplanes to baking white bread.
The next step is to start reducing investment by leasing property, buildings, and capital equipment. Staffing with temp service people cuts costs to the bone and completely destroys any hope of a resident knowledge base in the context of just what the hell are we doing here. Then we farm out the design function to hired guns who are expert in nothing but are expected to design your product line to meet Marketing goals established by more consultants. The availability of computer aided design tools like finite element analysis applied (or miss-applied), enabled these consultants to whip out designs without R&D or prototype testing. (cutting time to market and leaving NO room for error.) We all know how well that worked for the crew of the Enterprise, remember those 'o' ring failures?
What happened next is inevitable as corporations grow to leviathan sized enterprises that have outstripped even government entities. They go international and take the core of the economy with them when they depart.
You don't need engineers in a society of consumers. That's all that's left in the US. Oh yeah, there are bankers and lawyers left too, G_d help us all.
Regards,
GtG
PS Bitter, me? No, I'm retired.
You want fries with that?