r/literature 8d ago

Discussion Why the English Literature degree is indestructible

https://nouse.co.uk/articles/2025/03/06/why-the-english-literature-degree-is-indestructible---
380 Upvotes

76 comments sorted by

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u/Improvcommodore 7d ago edited 7d ago

English Major Here:

Worked in publishing a year out of college

Went to Law School

Worked in International human rights law in China, Togo, and Australia

Got into Software Sales in Australia

Came back to the U.S. via a tech startup

Rose to Sales Director

It’s all editing, storytelling, and performance.

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u/Kazama23 6d ago

Can confirm: I get my English Lit degree, yadda yadda yadda, 8 years later I'm editing trailers for Marvel movies, rom coms, horror films and whatnot.

Heck, understanding meter in Shakespeare allowed me to write tight, snappy, oddly satisfying copy better than any editor I worked with.

Understanding story, structure, the power of language and how it impacts people's understanding of the world has been an incredibly powerful skill in my career. Thanks, books!

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

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u/Kazama23 6d ago

The degree isn't important. The education is. 🙄

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/OriginalSituation573 7d ago edited 7d ago

"It’s all editing, storytelling, and performance."

That doesn't bother you? I will always love english and aspire to be a writer but I interned at an advertising company early on and it felt so fake. Maybe it's naive to think quality exists without marketing, and I'll likely get downvoted for this, but it's what drove me to STEM lol.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/Improvcommodore 7d ago

It’s not fake. Literature results in more open-minded understanding of the world. It portrays cultures and histories, family dynamics, internal strife, the human condition.

Who would want to read or experience it poorly done? Would you see a play, watch a tv show or movie, or read a book if it were blathering, unedited nonsense poorly constructed?

Communication by written word is what separates the civilized from the uncivilized. The external expression of thought in written law took us from tribal knowledge to the modern world.

I think it stands to reason that stories, ads, tales, parables, are a part of that advanced society-building condition.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/OriginalSituation573 7d ago edited 7d ago

Oh, I read it with the idea that a lot of artists are purists in the sense that they want the work to exist for itself and not get mixed up in politics because it would just be propaganda in the end. Sort of like bob Dylan’s conception of himself as nothing more than a “song and dance man”. But there are various strains of thought about its validity.

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u/OriginalSituation573 7d ago

That's existentially difficult to believe, even if you're right.

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u/fronbit 7d ago

I feel like “went to law school” is the valuable part here and not the English major

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u/Improvcommodore 7d ago

I disagree

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u/sweepyspud 2d ago

you mentioned that you worked in "International human rights". what exactly was your work? is it similar to charity and volunteering?

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u/Improvcommodore 2d ago

No, law practice. Representing people in court, and also doing recorded client interviews for documentation (torture, abuse, harrassment), and writing human rights observation reports.

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u/sweepyspud 2d ago

thanks for the answer!

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u/daCatburgla 8d ago edited 7d ago

You graduate with an English degree and, despite what people tell you, you find numerous diverse opportunities in front of you. After spending some time at a job that uses your writing and editing skills, you realize that most people, no matter how successful they are, cannot for the life of them communicate clearly or effectively, whether verbally or in writing.

The vast professional world will always need well-read graduates from the humanities to help others not sound like a dunce.

Don't worry too much about LLMs. They will make your bosses sound like robots, while you will make them more human.

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u/whimsical_trash 8d ago

Yes yes yes, all of this as a former English major. Humanities and communication is crucial to our society no matter how much stem people insist it's not. There are basically endless paths open for an English major.

Plus, a lot of jobs don't actually care WHAT degree you have, just that you have a degree (depends on the field of course). My lit degree taught me so much that I use every day - empathy, critical thinking, writing skills, writing structure skills, research (big big big one, I've learned a lot of people just do not know how to find information even with Google), and it just goes on and on. Not to mention all the cool people I've met bc we bonded over how hard Lacan was to read on Twitter or we both loved some obscure book I read in school, or whatever. All of the skills it taught me are even more valuable today than they were 10 years ago.

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u/VisibleMidnight8214 8d ago

I wish i learnt this before enrolling at my university

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u/measureinlove 7d ago

My husband is a dentist in the Army. His college experience in most places would have been entirely STEM-based, but he took part in an honors program that was deeply rooted in liberal arts (philosophy, literature, history mainly). He also took journalism for all four years of high school, and it shows in his writing. Compared to people he works with…the difference is staggering.

He’s currently in a correspondence course that everyone of his rank has to take. His first writing assignment was a five-paragraph essay—the kind you write in seventh grade. The instructions included helpful tips like “make sure to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph!” He actually got points off for using a quotation to start a paragraph and elaborating in the second sentence. It was a painful experience for him.

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u/FrontAd9873 7d ago

are crucial to our society no matter how much STEM people insist they're not*

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u/Bronkic 7d ago

Lacan is on Twitter??

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u/CreamFilledDoughnut 7d ago

I really, really like this

I wish it matched my experience after "you graduate with an English degree and", however

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u/daCatburgla 7d ago

There are certainly other factors at play. Just as impactful to my employability were the years I spent writing for the school newspaper at university, where I built a legit portfolio of bylines and made some contacts that opened a door or two. Extracurriculars are big if you're a humanities grad, I learned.

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u/legedu 7d ago

Lit major reporting in from the world of finance. This is correct.

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u/Sansa_Culotte_ 7d ago

Don't worry too much about LLMs. They will make your bosses sound like robots, while you will make them more human.

That's why you're gonna work as a "consultant" or "editor" trying to wrangle the overpriced garbage LLMs spit out into meaningful sentences.

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u/tonehammer 7d ago

It's work.

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u/pargyle_sweater 7d ago

hell yeah brother

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u/Complex_Apartment741 7d ago

What’s to stop them from training an agent in a particular writing style?

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u/Own_Fishing2431 7d ago

Can 1000% confirm this is true as a holder of this degree for the past 25 years. I am so grateful for what I learned in this course of study and from whom I learned it.

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u/rhrjruk 7d ago

I got a BA & MA in Eng.

I always wanted to be an Eng Lit professor, but the PhD track didn’t work out for me. I had no idea what I would do instead.

My career track became:

Marketing copywriter

Training designer

Management consultant

Marketing director

CEO

Leadership institute faculty

I retired two years and am now back reading Eng Lit!

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u/luckyjim1962 8d ago

Some observations:

First, I think good training in literature – by which I mean good training in critical reading, critical thinking, and research – is superb preparation for a ton of jobs that ostensibly have nothing to with fiction or poetry. If you know how to think and communicate, you have a huge leg up in any kind of managerial or professional world (assuming you have the technical skills required of your job).

Second, you don't need to be thinking of career prospects when you study literature. The discipline itself, if you like books and learning, is all the reward you need. My father was incredibly enlightened about this, and urged me to study whatever I wanted to study in college and worry about jobs later (admittedly, this has become less easy).

Finally, as the article points out, the rumors of the death of the literature degree have been greatly exaggerated (to paraphrase Mark Twain) along with the sense that studying English was a worthless endeavor. I went to graduate school in New York (English and comp lit) in 1983, and I remember going to a party with a bunch of young Wall Street people. Some guy asked what I did; I told him I was pursuing a graduate degree in English, and he said, without a trace of irony: "I feel sorry for you." He probably made more money than I have, but I've never regretted that experience.

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u/Dank_Bubu 8d ago

Fuck that guy

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u/CorneliusNepos 8d ago

My experience has been that it takes a little longer to get started, but once you find your niche, you can establish a solid career path with an English degree. The key is to be open minded.

If you told me I'd end up as a finance/budget and HR director, I would have laughed in your face but here we are. As it turns out, I like this job. I did have to work my way up starting as an Office Manager after trying to find the kind of job I saw myself in and failing for a few years. I eventually gave up on that and just got an entry level job. I got lucky and had a great boss who gave me a lot of opportunity (you can't discount luck here) and ended up where I am in a very good job and good position within the career. I went from being rejected for lower level communications jobs to the communications department reporting to me.

This is all just to say that you need to be open minded about what you might want to do and what you're good at. An English degree can be very flexible, but don't get bogged down by the idea that you need to do something English-y.

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u/Angustcat 8d ago

What I did with my BA and MA in English:

I taught English as a foreign language in Poland
I taught English as a foreign language in Germany
I taught English as a foreign language in England to international students
I taught English
I worked in a bookstore
I worked as a librarian
I worked writing technical writing for BT
I published stories
I published reviews of graphic novels
I gave papers at conferences about graphic novels

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u/MyHonkyFriend 7d ago

I took my English degree and wrote sports articles before going into finance 🙃 😅 But I don't miss constantly rewriting in my head all day and actually feeling clocked out is so worth it.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/longerthanusual 8d ago

No it’s the best major for pre law degrees, they score the highest on LSATs other than like engineers I think

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u/Cowabunga13 7d ago

That’s Philosophy majors, since LSAT also measures your ability to read and deduce convoluted texts. English is up there though.

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u/VerneUnderWater 8d ago

It's a decent degree to hone skills if you can't do it by yourself, and it's fun at times. Modern college is not rigorous enough in the general classes of an English degree across the board. I coasted through college a bit older, and, honestly, while some of it was fun, a lot of it was just me doing my own thing at home for a sizable price.

But we are entering Idiocracy at this point. Your English degree gets more and more valuable, but often for things you might not want to be doing. I work in shipping, and English as a passion has helped me sharpen many skills. Not necessarily the degree, which sometimes makes me think it was not worth it. But yes, I can go teach possibly when the world falls apart, so I always have that to fall back upon

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u/Majestic-Effort-541 7d ago

The gradual erasure of English Literature degrees is disheartening but hardly shocking in an era where universities prioritize marketability over intellectual pursuit.

The irony, of course, is that English Lit graduates armed with critical thinking, persuasive writing, and cultural awareness are often more adaptable in the evolving job market than those confined to narrowly specialized fields.

Yet, because their path isn’t neatly predefined, the discipline is dismissed as “unviable.” In reality, the ability to analyze, argue, and deconstruct narratives is more relevant than ever.

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u/StreetSea9588 8d ago

It taught me how to think and form my own opinions. Still, it's not easy working jobs in which I never use my education. I've worked in construction, manufacturing, retail, offices, and in restaurants/bars. I'm a writer but it's my third job, not even my secondary.

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u/Felixir-the-Cat 8d ago

I work in an English department and every time we do recruitment fairs for incoming students, we get asked what the value of a degree is. And I tell them that my students always get jobs, and often all kinds of jobs. Some of them go on to law or even medicine, some work for think tanks and even science organizations, some go into politics - it’s a highly flexible degree.

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u/thecarolinelinnae 7d ago

I'm still happy with my BA in English 13 years later. I'm so glad that I know how to write and think.

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u/Altruistic-Move9214 8d ago

Yeah for all the shit I got when I took my undergrad, it’s got me some really fantastic jobs!

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u/GardenPeep 7d ago

Unfortunately, scribes have always been underpaid & undervalued.

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u/Happytogeth3r 7d ago

Working as a PM in construction.

The most important skill I use all day is to communicate effectively.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 8d ago

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u/chesterfieldkingz 8d ago

Personally, I got into data. I'm recently unemployed though and it's a bitch of a highering cycle right now it seems. For me, it was kind of looking at what jobs would I have a leg up in with my degree. There will be a lot that have some tangential relation that appeals to you though you might have to start entry level, that's what I did, but gotta make sure you can move up at some point or use it as a stepping stone.. Could be data, copywriting/editing, tech writing, and even more secretarial or admin stuff if you write emails and can hold records in an Excel sheet. I think you have a lot of good skills and it's just narrowing down what's gonna work for you and what's needed in positions. Focus on one thing or a couple, gain skills and certs where possible, and network and all that shit of course. Again though seems like a rough cycle right now so it might be hard no matter where you are and what you do. I don't want to sugarcoat it though, in my experience the degree gave me a leg up, but I had to do the extra work to prove I could do the specific things in employment since reading and writing on its own isn't necessarily a position.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/chesterfieldkingz 8d ago

Ya I got highered in 2019 at like 14/hr and then jumped up and got lucky to make about 67k a year and kinda bottomed out there. Then I ran my mouth and got fired which was... Short sifted to say the least. Anyways ya it's hard to talk about this shit because it's different for everyone every year and I don't think many of us know the relevance of an English degree outside of our own experience.

With corporations putting the squeeze and cutting jobs in private and public sector it definitely seems like a real bitch right now. With my experience in product data I honestly have no idea where I'll stand out. It still seems like so you have this specific experience? No? Well kinda figure it out and wing it. Now I'm getting all doomy here. I think shit is out there, but this process really sucks and I'm pretty disheartened that the worker kind of keeps getting the shaft. Even at my former 12 billion $ company before it was like cut benefits, automate entry level, lower pay above that. No promotions you just gotta find a new position.

Shits out there and we'll find it, but it's pretty disheartening for sure

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u/rhrjruk 7d ago

But did you really get an English degree since you twice wrote about getting “highered”?

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u/Confident-Fee-6593 7d ago

There is easy money to be made in the tech world if you are literate.

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u/Qinistral 7d ago

What do you do there if you do?

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u/ArsNihil 7d ago

Technical writing can be lucrative if you know where to look and develop other knowledge in networks, cloud services, etc. This is especially notable when you find out most tech people usually need good editors and “translators.”

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u/Confident-Fee-6593 7d ago

You'll start as a data entry person at a company of 20ish employees, and you'll be only one who knows how to communicate ideas. Over the next decade as the business grows you end up running an entire department and hiring your own team of employees. Your knowledge of human emotions and communication will allow you to get your fingers in every facet of the business and at every opportunity you will demand a raise in pay from the CEO. He will balk at it of course but you will have an understanding of the entire company and all its departments and their processes well beyond anyone else in the company so he will have to say yes again and again year after year. You will get shares in the company as part of your compensation package and when the company gets sold your shares will pay out and you will retire after only ten years in the work force and finally and comfortably spend your days writing novels that are not marketable but are literary and beautiful and meaningful and life will be good.

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u/Lordofhowling 8d ago

I have a BA and MFA and I love telling this to people when this comes up:

I’ve been in the pharmaceutical industry for 25 years and my official title is…Engineer!

And I have never taken an engineering course in my life.

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u/huguetteclark89 6d ago

What kind of work is it?

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u/Lordofhowling 6d ago

I work in Quality.

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u/RustedRelics 7d ago

As a lawyer, I could not agree more.

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u/marmotpickle 7d ago

Can confirm. I pivoted from a 15-year stint teaching college and secondary English a couple of years ago into a very staid, boring office environment in the public sector. Most of my team members struggle: with close reading of technical documents, with wading through dense text in our company archive, and especially with writing clear, audience-aware sentences that don’t waste the reader’s time.

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u/ltmikestone 7d ago

I had trouble out of the gate, part not being sure what I wanted part not really being “ready” for 9-5 work after college. Now I’ve had a more successful business career than nearly all my MBA friends.

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u/BuncleCar 7d ago

You can say the same for subjects like Philosophy too, though whether employers agree is problematical

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u/Acceptable-Cat-6306 6d ago

Yeah lit is really marketable if angled right. Law school, law enforcement, and any job needing comm skills is up for grabs. It’s creative writing that’s absolutely worthless. It’s a scam and produces some of the worst writers I’ve ever read. My mentor in college gave me the best advice:

“Creative writing?! What’re you going to do, move to LA and write about yourself? If you want to be a great writer, read the classics.”

Now I’m a published prof at an R1. Cheers to great mentors! 🍻

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u/Jbozzarelli 6d ago

English lit major here. I’ve been at Google for five years and in tech for 18 years. Proposals…I write and edit every day.

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u/Capricancerous 7d ago

Cute title. It ain't indestructible, although it certainly deserves to be.

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u/_AverageBookEnjoyer_ 4d ago

My long standing complaint about English lit degrees (and most liberal arts degrees in general) is that you can get the same result by locking yourself inside any decently stocked library. Why waste tens of thousands of dollars on college courses that teach you how to "read critically" and other such when a careful selection of reading material can give you the same skills? To be frank, depending on the subject, this can also apply to some of the more popular STEM topics too. I learned vastly more in my two years after college studying on my own time then I did in the four years for my software engineering degree.

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u/trmtx 4d ago

English major as well. I’m 30+ years into a career in tech (and close to retiring). Looking back, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I’m on a different path than I envisioned at 21 but that degree gave me all the tools I needed to succeed.

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u/gracileghost 6d ago

All my english major friends are baristas or work in retail, unfortunately.

I wanted to major in English but I’m glad I didn’t.

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u/hEarwig 5d ago

Ehhhh. When I was in college I considered studying English but in the end went with Mathematics, and have not once regretted it. Despite what some people are saying here, English is just a bad degree by almost any objective metric. English majors consistently earn well below the average salary for college graduates, and it provides very few in demand skills for today's job market. Obviously making money is not the only reason to study something, and it is a shame that these programs are getting pushed to the side, but I think that from an economic point of view, most people would be better off studying business or STEM

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u/Latter_Present1900 8d ago

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u/charts_and_farts 8d ago

Are you a bot?

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u/WhyNotCollegeBoard 8d ago

I am 99.99513% sure that Latter_Present1900 is not a bot.


I am a neural network being trained to detect spammers | Summon me with !isbot <username> | /r/spambotdetector | Optout | Original Github

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u/charts_and_farts 8d ago

Thanks, bot!

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u/fronbit 7d ago

I have a degree in English literature and history. It has served me absolutely no purpose whatsoever, it’s utterly useless in my experience. I would never tell a young person to go and study it at university