My next boss had a degree in English. His thought was that no matter what he did with his life, communication was always at the center. He had founded 2 different tech companies before I met him, and he's now the CTO of a large company.

One of the smartest people I've ever personally worked with went to seminary (I'm not sure if he was an atheist before or after, but talk about fun conversations over a beer). He was preoccupied with finding meaning in life, and did things like math and CS with what seemed like his spare cycles.

The point is that a persons degree really only matters for their first job, and often even then only if they want to work at a FAANG for that first job. Where people end up 5-10-15-20 years later in their career has little to do with their degree.

You can do a degree in history of art and then become a fighter jet pilot if you want.

As someone who doesn't have a CS degree, I found that FAANG companies were much more willing to take a risk on someone without a degree getting their first job than many smaller companies.

I majored in philosophy before moving to mathematics - it was phenomenally interesting, but I wouldn't be impressed by a candidate with a philosophy degree these days. A lot of people who hire humanities degrees from top schools talk about things like "diversity of thought", but I think if that was the real reason they might look for candidates outside the top schools.

Agree that I'd like to see more working class kids being ambitious and going for top schools, moving away from home etc but at least play safe and go for something with job prospects.