Linguistics, Unmarketable

Stephen Colbert reported a couple of days ago (8/1, episode 3099, I just got back from a trip with no television) on the value of linguistics, at least as an undergraduate major. The relevant excerpt was taken from The No Fact Zone:

It’s a breakthrough that allows me to achieve a long time dream, arranging all fields of knowledge into a three-tiered pricing system: ‘marketable’, ‘non-marketable’, and ‘you know this is killing your parents’.

Now, ‘marketable’ is the priciest: business, engineering and science. And whatever future professional football players major in.

Then there’s ‘non-marketable’. That’s for majors like history. Why spend a lot for it when you won’t get a high paying job? Plus, if you don’t learn history, evidently you’re doomed to repeat it, and you’ll find out what happened for free.

Finally, the lowest tier, which includes classics, comparative literature, linguistics; basically, anything taught by someone who says he ‘lives to teach’. Of course, if these universities really want to revolutionize education, they should apply monetary values not just to majors, but to individual facts. [emphasis mine]

The acticle linked to from The No Fact Zone doesn't seem to mention any of the third-tier programs that Stephen mentions, so it would seem to be something added by the writers for the show. As it is a satire, I would imagine that it is being based off of common (mis) conceptions. Generally speaking though, the low value applied to the listed majors are "what are you going to use that for?" If the focus is more on the end result of a job that one might gain from a type of degree, it might line up with these opinions better. Personally, I never associated the value so much with direct marketabilitiy, and I wouldn't even go so far as to say that a linguistics degree is unmarketable, there have been some surges in demand that have added quite some value, just maybe not in directly linguistics-related areas.