@TuringEquivalent,
Ah, but that is where you are wrong. I went to the monthly introductory lecture for the now defunct Radcliffe Employment Services back in either 90 or 91. A group of at least 20 women were present. At least one said that she had a doctorate in a field that no longer exists. No one asked her what the field was and she wasn't forth coming.
WHile I do not believe in college as career training, I did minor in journalism in order to have an entree into the world of work. That was before internships. I applied for a position with the wire services a week before one of the majors went on strike. I followed it with myself and when I reached the office, the receptionist's phone was ringing off the hook. She went to get the folder of applications, which was very thick. The neatly stapled resumes fell all over the floor as two phone calls came in. I revived my plans immediately.
Today, we have many career training degrees. There is a master's degree in teaching English as a Second Language. As a colleague of mine said, ESL instruction used to be grammar and it worked better. When I was certified to teach (1969-71),all one needed was a 23 hour sequence of education courses with a prereq of psych 101. There wasn't even a school of education: education was a division within the College of Liberal Arts, just as political science and English were divisions. Today's prospective teachers are involved in a ridiculous amount of inconsequential work. Then fully half of them do not participate in the teacher application process which they find demeaning. (It is demeaning.)
There are so many MBA programs that the degree is even more absurd than ever. There are also master's degree programs in "higher education." Here, I have to quote Jack Paar: I kid you not. Taught through the School of Education, the program seems to mix business and education. Really?
The point is that more and more people are signing up for more and more specialty fields and learning less and less. They think they are preparing for careers, but think of the woman with a doctorate in an extinct field.