A viral roundup of so-called NYU majors recently made the rounds online, and it’s easy to see why hardworking Americans are incredulous. The list includes eyebrow-raising entries like “The Performance of Self,” “Queering and Decolonizing Theater Practice,” and other labels that sound more like activist projects than marketable degrees. The mockery wasn’t accidental — conservative commentators and ordinary taxpayers alike are asking how these programs justify six-figure price tags.
Let’s be blunt: young men and women are taking on crushing debt to study courses that offer flimsy pathways to stable employment. Parents who sacrificed and saved for college now watch their kids graduate with lofty titles and empty résumés while student-loan balances balloon and taxpayers get left holding the bill. Schools like NYU have become finishing schools for political performance rather than engines of upward mobility.
Some programs that sound implausible do exist outside elite universities in the form of metaphysical and spiritual-healing curricula, which peddle degrees in “spiritual healing” and related fields at niche institutes. Those outfits may tout personal growth, reiki, or transpersonal counseling, but they are no substitute for accredited, vocational training that leads to real paychecks. Americans deserve transparency about what these credentials actually prepare students to do.
Facts matter: majors in arts and niche humanities fields often show weaker earnings trajectories compared with technical or professional degrees, and job prospects can be thin for graduates who don’t pair passion with marketable skills. Conservatives aren’t arguing students must never follow their interests; we’re insisting that they deserve honest information about return on investment and sensible alternatives, especially in a tuition market gone wild.
This is bigger than mockery — it’s about the incentives universities have built and the federal money that props them up. When elite institutions prioritize ideological niche programs over STEM, trades, and job-ready curricula, it’s taxpayers and future generations who pay the price through unaffordable tuition and unpayable loans. It’s time to stop rewarding programs that exist primarily to signal virtue and start rewarding institutions that actually prepare students for work and family life.
Parents, state legislators, and conservative leaders should demand accountability: require clear career outcome reporting, expand vocational and apprenticeship pathways, and end federal subsidies that insulate bad academic incentives. Encourage young Americans to learn trades, coding, business, or engineering if they want financial security, and to pursue the arts only with a realistic secondary plan. Our country prospers when education is aligned with work, not when it becomes a taxpayer-funded seminar in grievance and self-expression.
This isn’t nostalgia for a bygone era — it’s common-sense stewardship of our children’s futures and our nation’s finances. Proud, hardworking Americans want colleges that teach skills, build character, and produce citizens ready to contribute, not graduates trained to chase trends or perform politics for a living. Demand better from our institutions and fight for an education system that rewards effort, merit, and the timeless American value of work.
