I don’t know anything about English degrees, but I have a Psychology degree so I’ll put in my two cents about that. To work in the field of Psychology making decent money, you’ll need a graduate or post-graduate degree. However, having a degree in the first place makes you more marketable than someone without one. Psychology teaches you a lot about human behavior and thought, which can be helpful in a wide range of professions. Psychology is a degree, like many, in which you may need to “start at the bottom” once you graduate but you’ll advance quicker than you would without it.
I minored in criminal justice and ended up getting a job in the law field with a very decent starting salary, so I have no regrets about my education. Without it, I wouldn’t have this job because I had no experience working at a law firm and they wanted either experience or education. Could I have gotten in with an English degree? Yep. Any degree is better than no degree.
I can’t stand when people say a degree is “useless.” Yeah, there are people with psychology degrees flipping burgers, but there are also those, like me, with a great job that I really enjoy. Your degree is what you make it out to be; none are inherently useless. I worked my butt off to earn a high GPA, did a couple of internships, and used my communication skills to impress the pants off of the first firm I interviewed with and, just like that, I had a job secured before I even graduated. People like to blame their degree for their unsatisfactory professional lives so they don’t have to take any responsibility for skating through college more focused on partying than studying and not doing anything to build their resume, expecting a great job to be handed to them in four years. It’s not the degree’s fault you’re a loser, it’s yours (“you” in a general sense, of course).
I say people should study what they’re interested in, whether it’s “marketable” or not.