As far as I know, it's mainly postgrad. At my school, I have to take a certain number of "general education" classes, including a bunch of science and math classes of my choosing (one of the science classes has to be a lab, too)... and I'm a Japanese language major.

I majored in Philosophy and minored in Religious Studies and got my BA in May of last year. I finished up first year law last Friday. Because law school isn't about your degree. It's about your basic intelligence and your dedication to being educated. Most jobs don't care about what your degree is, so long as you have a degree. As such, if you're a feminist, or interested in becoming educated about the difficulties that women face and have faced, or enjoy history and want to specialize in something more personal to you than "French history" or "The World Wars" or "Medieval Studies" then Women's Studies is a perfectly legitimate (and useful) direction to go in.

My Dean says that the best degree for law school is (I kid you not) foreign languages, or music. Because "the law might as well be a language all its own, and nothing can really prepare you for it."

I don't know about med school, but I do know that there are plenty of jobs that you can get after undergrad where it doesn't matter what you studied as long as you proved that you can study. I chose my career at least in part because I wanted to do something that I wanted to do, for once in my life, and law let me do that--for three years, I focused on things I found interesting and enjoyable. I don't regret the decision even if you guys seem to think philosophy is useless.

I assure you, my estimated earnings disagree.

I agree, in terms of employability, a degree is just a degree. Most employers just care if you have one, or not, and what level it is, as a measure of intelligence. Although candidates with a relevant degree to the field of work could have a bit of an advantage, at least in my current field (Network Support), it's experience and professional qualifications that count. I was promoted to my current Network post back in 2000 because I had already being doing the job and had an MCSE and CCNA. They didn't really care that I didn't have a degree. On the other hand, the field I'd like to go into (physics research) does require further study... which is why after I finish my BSc Physics I'm either going to do an MSc in Quantum Fields and Fundamental Forces, or finish a BSc Maths and then do the masters. It really does depend what type of job you are going to go into. Again, I don't know about other fields, but from what I know of friends and collegues who have a BSc Computing degree it hardly prepares you at all for a real IT environment.

I'd like to do a Philosophy degree some day, but for interest, rather than to use it in a career.

Also, Woman's Studies?? I can haz Gay Studies pls?

Wait, no, on second thoughts Gay Studies would be a rather sticky topic.

Hmm, according to salary.com if I was in America I would be earning $80,000. Damn cheapskate UK public sector

@Chade: I'm not so sure about this "pick one subject" at bachelor's level thing. My brother and I are both doing what seems to be the English equivalent of the American "major" and "minor" - he's taking French and Chinese, I'm taking Philosophy and Psychology. With the way my course is made up I'm even thinking about skipping one of the psychology courses and replacing it with Law, which...will still count for my degree. Maybe my university is just weird that way but my brother is at N'ham and by all accounts that's a fairly standard experience...

At a bachelors level in the US, a huge emphasis is placed on liberal arts education in almost all majors. Regardless of your major at my school, you had to complete so many courses in a variety of fields to prove you were "well rounded." The bulk of your courses were still specific to your major (example: chemistry), but the this doesn't mean you could also be taking art history, psychology, nutrition, etc. Obviously there is a limit to how many elective courses you can take, and there is generally some sort of structural requirement you must meet to qualify for graduation.

In the case of post graduate education in fields like medicine/law, there is no real "major" that fits these. Therefore, there are generally just a list of courses you MUST have to apply, but your emphasis of study is irrelevant as a sociology major is no more/less qualified than a biology major or a physiology major or a biochemistry major or a dance major so long as they both can get the grades in the baseline courses required and do well on a standardized entrance exam (the MCAT).

As it turns out, people tend to complete these requirements to apply in a biology major more so than say a dance major (there are biology requirements, but no dance requirements) but that isn't to say you can't major in dance, add on the extra stuff, and still apply. People who do this obviously stand out, and it tends to work out better for them because most medical schools place an emphasis on being culturally aware and more than just a hardcore science nerd (a major facet of medicine is communication - and if you can't talk to your patients and relate to them on a real life level, you will suck at being a doctor).

I hope that somewhat clears it up.

This is a unique trait of jobs that base their credentials mostly on certificates and endorsements. We'd never hire someone without a relevant engineering degree from an ABET-accredited school to design planes. For entry-level IT stuff, a degree is a requirement, but the field itself is negotiable. If you're working on a government contract, it ceases to be negotiable--not only will you have a degree in IT, but you will have it in the appropriate field of IT. Then you trickle a little further downhill and get things like human resources and project management. The degree remains a requirement, but no one cares one iota about what you majored in as long as you have the appropriate SHRM or Six Sigma endorsements.

Network support is really an administrative position. It requires specialized IT knowledge in the same sense that customer training requires knowledge of educational techniques. Flash your Cisco papers and you're in the running.

It's true of any computer science job.... Esepecially a field like AAA game development. The only people who have degrees in that field are people who got degrees later in their job career, and maybe graphics programmers. Infact I know blizzard is specifically looking for people right now who has a degree/majored in something very ungeeky, and only later picked up programming skills.

I think this got derailed at some point, but looking back, I think it is important to mention purely for those who are unfamiliar with Woman's Studies in the US: it is not a degree in propaganda somewhat akin to how degrees in African/Religious/whatever Studies are obviously not degrees in propaganda.

It's also not as limiting as one might initially think because at least in the US, many post graduate fields (there are always exceptions) are more concerned if the applicant meets baseline criteria more so than holding a degree in X. It's not uncommon to see people use this as a means to go into education, medicine, law, etc.