Do We Like Our Degrees?

What's the right reason to pick a field of study?

When I put “economics” on my UCAS form, it wasn’t because I’d uncovered some burning passion for the subject itself. Sure, I enjoyed IB Economics, but graphs and curves never exactly lit me up or sparked much curiosity. Admittedly, it was because the degree sounded serious and employable. 

I don’t think I was alone in that. There’s a certain reassurance in picking economics, IR, or management: degrees that come with clear labels and ready-made explanations. You can tell relatives what you study without the age-old, “So … what do you actually do with that?” Honestly, you can’t really blame yourself. At seventeen or eighteen, reeling from exams and UCAS deadlines, it feels impossible to weigh the next four years of your life with any real clarity. So you go with what sounds safe, what opens doors, and figure the rest out later. Eventually you start to wonder: do I actually like what I’m studying, or just the idea of it? Too often, it feels like the label matters more than the material itself.

Not to sound like a tour guide, but one reason I chose St Andrews was its flexible degree structure. This semester I chose a first-year anthropology class; hardly a grand statement, just to have a small detour from the management and economics modules that tend to overtake my timetable. Even in the first two weeks, it’s been refreshing to sit in a completely different discipline. It reminded me that the degree I chose at eighteen doesn’t necessarily have to define all four years, and new curiosity can surface in unexpected places. Sometimes it creeps in from the sidelines, and it’s no less valid than the subjects we picked under the banner of ‘direction’ or ‘practicality.’

The issue is that most of us don’t let ourselves follow that interest or curiosity. Why? Because the sunk-cost fallacy kicks in fast. By the time you’ve invested years of effort into a subject, it feels futile to change course. You tell yourself that your persistence is proof of passion, when in reality it’s just proof of inertia. “But I’ve already made it this far” or “what else would I do … ?” become the excuses to continue.

Disclaimer: none of this is to say everyone secretly hates their degree, or that studying a certain subject is inherently dishonest. But it’s worth asking what, exactly, sustains our attachment? Are we motivated by actual curiosity, or by the performance of loving a subject that happens to align with high-paying jobs later down the road?

What my anthropology detour reminds me is that curiosity feels different from obligation. Back in high school, I loved history and English but I never seriously considered them at university. Not because they lacked value, but because I’d internalised the idea that some subjects point more directly to a career and that linearity seemed like a responsible choice. The more interpretive, subjective nature of anthropology has felt like a return to that side of myself. By contrast, the structured, quantitative logic of my degree often leaves me performing interest rather than actually feeling it. Yes, it passes for engagement, but it isn’t the same as any curiosity I had before everything was filtered through career logic.

There’s no moral victory in finishing a degree you don’t actually love just because you started it. That isn’t discipline; it’s denial. The point isn’t that we’ve all chosen wrongly, but that sometimes we fail to recognize university for what it’s meant to be: a place to explore. Which is why we should give ourselves permission to keep re-evaluating, especially in first and second year, when there’s still room to change direction. Curiosity is a valid compass, even if it doesn’t point straight to a career. If we’re only pretending to care in the name of employability, then we’ve already let the job market colonise the one space that’s meant to belong to learning for its own sake.

Illustration by Eloise Zhang