All degrees mainly teach liberal nonsense. This includes law, STEM subjects, even medicine. Almost none of them challenge or ever explain political economy. And learning anything in an isolated way will lead to error and an inability to understand or resolve problems.

But let me clarify something: everyone should get a degree if they can, and become as highly educated as possible. The subject doesn’t really matter.

If one pays attention and uses the time wisely, a degree creates the space for you to teach yourself anything you like. If you develop the knack, you’ll even be rewarded for it. See Bertell Ollman’s How to Take an Exam and Remake the World for some advice on how to achieve this: https://archive.org/details/howtotakeexamrem00ollm

The trick is to treat things seriously. Don’t be a liberal student. And I mean that in every sense of the word. If all you do on any degree is read what you’re given to read (mainly textbooks, extracts, and summaries), you will absorb the bourgeois education as intended.

If you accept the lesson of Kwame Ture, you’ll fair much better (regardless of any politics that you include in assessments—which I cannot generally recommend). See this video of Ture speaking at a university: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c6ZWJT3B3r0&pp=ygUKS3dhbWUgdHVyZQ%3D%3D. (If you like that one, you’ll also enjoy https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bN8oq7lF9FA&pp=ygUKS3dhbWUgdHVyZQ%3D%3D.)

This interview with Michael Hudson will be illuminating for you: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hH9pzzIIEj4&pp=ygUYTWljaGFlbCBodWRzb24gaW50ZXJ2aWV3. If he hadn’t studied classical economics, we’d have never had Super Imperialism or his sharp insights into the rise of China and decline of the US. He could predict what he predicted because he paid attention and went beyond what was taught.

Note, however, that Hudson changed his PhD thesis just to pass the exam, even though he knew it was incorrect – because the examiners refused to accept what was not in the orthodox textbooks. How did Hudson learn the truth? His mentor agreed to mentor him if he read every source cited in Marx’s (IIRC) Theories of Surplus Value. That is: he gave himself the best classical liberal economics education that he could (from a Marxist perspective and in order to better understand Marx, of course).

To be a conscious student also requires understanding how bourgeois education will be anti-communist when it appears to give fair treatment to Marxists and AES, often in the name of ‘balance’. For a glimpse into how publishing fetters the truth – and so to understand what to look for – see Grover Furr’s talk: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccmj2Lj5jB0&pp=ygULR3JvdmVyIGZ1cnI%3D. And remember Michael Parenti’s warning: to think and write unorthodox thoughts, you must swim against the orthodox stream; you will be held to a much higher standard than everyone else, so you must be better than everyone else.

Lenin, too, started as a lawyer. The working class must be as skilled as possible if it is to govern. And that requires an education. At the moment, the only option is a bourgeois education. Unless you can go to a School of Marxism in China or maybe Medical School in Cuba. We cannot create a ‘principled’ anti-intellectualism that does the work of the ruling class for it, i.e. deters the working class from higher education, leaving us without the skills, knowledge, and credentials to (a) do what we can in the meantime and (b) step up when history needs us.

I mean to encourage you. If what I’ve said is off-putting at all, know that your job is to get the education and the qualification while teaching yourself. Your job is not to proselytise the academics or your peers (although you may find like minded peers during your studies). So you don’t have to hold yourself out as a pariah in front of the university or in your assessments. In that respect, you just need to give the answers that get the marks, almost regardless of your personal beliefs.

Get a degree!

As a person who’s about to head to University in a few months and currently does Maths, Computer Science, and Business Studies, I can definitely state that any degree/subject which involves liberal topics such as Economics and Political Science are useless.

As an example, in Business Studies, it’s always about the business. They just put the thing out there, “the business is what matters”. Of course they delve into ethics and stuff but they don’t care about that because businesses are supposed to be the best option. It’s just capitalist realism combined with writing too much.

Economics is similar, it just doesn’t involve businesses as much. It’s just: “keep the economy going, line go up means world more gooder.” It’s an absolute joke. People with Economics or PoliSci degrees are also utterly atrocious and worse than marxists who don’t hold any degree of the sort.

I’m surprised that this shit is being taught to begin with. It’s all liberal nonsense, really. I don’t have much on PoliSci, but someone here made a series of posts where it delves into the liberal nature of PoliSci.

As someone taking Political Science and Psychology, I will say it’s useful but not in a vacuum.

At my university there is encouragement for critical thinking which is very important when taking a Political class in the west. I learned a whole lot and will continue to, but I also had to keep my wits about me as the course content was at best dismissive of Marxism, and at worst very hostile. Although, my papers and essays were explicitly Marxist in nature and yet I still did very well. I’m getting my degree because I can and I know people tend to listen more when you have a piece of paper to back you up.

There’s also the fact that taking these classes will help you better navigate the world, I think that’s what’s most important.

Useful in terms of getting a job in the institutions of bourgeois power? Somewhat. Useful in terms of developing oneself as a Marxist and learning how the world works? Not so much, at least at educational institutions within the imperial core.

The exact form of liberalism depends on the university, but they’re on the spectrum in one way or another. For that’s how imperial academia is designed. It may allow some hollow anti-status-quo takes from specific schools or individuals, but overall the purpose of academia is to provide intellectual sounding cover stories for the crimes of the empire.

Open Veins taught me more about economics than a 4 year undergrad degree in the subject.

That being said, if it gets you a job you have to make a living.

They’re only useful when paired with other majors, for example law. And by “useful” I mean profitable to your career.

Or do they only teach liberal nonsense?

Yeah, in the West they continue the high school legacy and preach “free market is gooder”. That said, some professors won’t ding you if you go against the grain and advocate for Marxism or whatever. So read the room and do what you think is best, but if you have to write bourgeoisie bullshit to get a passing mark, well… no one is going to give a fuck about some bullshit you wrote as part of an undergrad paper after the grade is given. In this context do what you have to do to get the paper. Use the energy and willpower you save to do actual communist praxis instead. Luckily many universities have Marxist or Marxist sympathetic orgs you can join. Unless you go to uni where I did (Norwich), then you’re fucked in that regard.

There are still valuable things to learn even in liberal institutions though, and you’re there to learn things, so spend the time to learn things. As other comrades have advised, explore outside the confines of what the uni hands you as mandatory reading. Find Marxist thinkers in your area of study and read what they had to say about the issues you are exploring. Often, even liberal colleges will ask the right questions, the problem usually lies in the answer they encourage you to arrive to when exploring it.

Also, always consider how the knowledge you gain can be useful for the communist cause. If China and Vietnam can find value in continuing to offer Economics and Political Science degrees, you can too.

I’m split between yes and no