Student unemployment in Canada recently hit 20%, while the World Economic Forum estimates 120 million jobs will disappear by 2030. Many popular university degrees continue training students for exactly these disappearing positions, creating a growing disconnect between educational investment and career outcomes.
This analysis examines ten degrees facing the most significant challenges in the coming decade—not because these fields lack importance, but because economics, technology, and job markets have fundamentally shifted away from traditional degree holders in these areas.
10. General Marketing
Market Reality
The marketing profession isn't disappearing—it's splitting into winners and losers. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report projects traditional "Marketing and Sales Professionals" declining by 9% through 2030, while "Digital Marketing and Strategy Specialists" ranks among the top 30 fastest-growing roles globally.
The Automation Impact
AI tools now handle functions previously requiring junior marketers: copywriting, ad design, audience segmentation, A/B testing, and campaign optimization. Platforms like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and automated marketing systems replace entire teams performing these tasks.
Economic Outlook
Entry-level marketing coordinator roles pay approximately $42,000-$55,000 annually—barely above minimum wage in Toronto or Vancouver when adjusted for cost of living. The position represents minimal financial return on a typical $60,000-$85,000 degree investment.
Skills Gap
Most general marketing degrees fail to teach in-demand specializations at competitive depth: data analytics, growth hacking, product marketing, and marketing automation. These hybrid roles combining creative and technical capabilities represent the positions AI cannot easily replicate.
Alternative Path
Specialized certifications in marketing automation, conversion rate optimization, or specific platform expertise (HubSpot, Marketo, Google Analytics) provide faster, cheaper routes to competitive positions. The general marketing degree offers neither sufficient specialization nor broad enough business training to justify its cost.
9. Hotel & Hospitality Management
Industry Contraction
Statistics Canada data shows accommodation sector employment in Ontario fell 20.2% between July 2019 and July 2024. Nationally, employment dropped from 459,400 to 442,700 jobs during the same period—and recovery remains incomplete.
Technology Replacement
Hotels now operate with approximately 10% fewer staff than pre-pandemic levels, filling gaps with technology rather than workers. Self-check-in kiosks, app-based room service, AI concierges handling 60% of front desk calls, and digital systems processing 60% of arrivals have permanently reduced staffing requirements.
Educational Economics
Canadian hospitality management programs typically cost $26,000-$38,000 in tuition for two-year diplomas. Including living expenses, total investment reaches $60,000-$80,000 for credentials leading to $42,000-$58,000 starting salaries in expensive tourist cities where rent alone costs $2,000 monthly.
Industry Structure
Hospitality has always valued hands-on experience over formal education. Workers can start as front desk agents, learn operations, and advance into management within 3-5 years without diploma costs. Senior positions requiring revenue management or multi-property operations demand data analytics and financial modeling skills most hospitality programs don't teach adequately.
Better Alternative
A Bachelor of Commerce provides broader business foundations applicable across industries while teaching essential skills for hospitality leadership. The industry-specific diploma offers minimal advantage over experience-based advancement.
8. Psychology (Without Graduate School Plans)
The Credential Gap
Psychology ranks among Canada's most popular undergraduate degrees, creating a fundamental problem: the Canadian Psychological Association clearly states that calling yourself a psychologist requires at minimum a Master's degree, typically a PhD.
A bachelor's degree in psychology doesn't create psychologists—it creates bachelor's degree holders in psychology. These represent very different career outcomes.
Employment Reality
Government of Canada projections show licensed psychologists facing "strong risk of shortage" through 2033, with 14,200 job openings expected. However, a bachelor's degree represents only one-fifth of the required journey. Students uncertain about completing 6-8 years toward a PhD should reconsider this path entirely.
Salary Outcomes
Psychology bachelor's holders typically enter roles paying $42,000-$56,000: HR assistant, research assistant, case worker, or administrative coordinator positions. Critically, these jobs don't actually require psychology degrees. The Canadian Psychological Association lists career options for bachelor's holders as "personnel, labour relations, social services, technical writing, corrections, probation, parole, marketing and public relations"—generalist positions where the degree is relevant but not required.
Competition Problem
Entry-level positions specify "bachelor's degree in psychology or related field"—meaning the specific degree provides no advantage over sociology, social work, or general arts graduates competing for identical roles. The degree offers neither sufficient specialization to command premium pay nor the licensing required for protected professional work.
Emerging Opportunities
Growing demand exists for psychology backgrounds in technology—user research, UX design, product psychology—where understanding human behavior matters. However, these positions require additional training in design thinking, research methodologies, prototyping tools, and data analysis. Psychology provides foundations, but tech companies hire people demonstrating practical skills through portfolios and tool expertise, not just theoretical understanding.
Valid Path
If psychology genuinely interests you and you're committed to graduate school—clinical psychology, counseling, neuropsychology—the path makes sense. Licensed psychologists in Canada earn $80,000-$102,000 with strong demand, particularly in private practice where rates reach $300 per hour.
7. Sociology/Anthropology
Classification Problem
Government of Canada data groups sociology and anthropology under "Other professional occupations in social science"—a category including anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers, historians, linguists, political scientists, and sociologists. These degrees don't merit separate job categories, signaling limited specific demand.
Graduate Degree Reality
Licensed sociologists and anthropologists with Master's or PhD degrees can earn well—wage data shows $35-$46 per hour for social science professionals in Canada. This applies to people with graduate degrees working in actual research, policy analysis, or academic positions.
Bachelor's Outcomes
Sociology graduates with bachelor's degrees typically enter roles paying $45,000-$58,000: case management, program coordination, research assistant positions, HR roles, social services work. None require sociology degrees specifically—job postings specify "bachelor's degree in sociology or related field," creating competition with psychology graduates, social work graduates, general arts graduates, and often people with college certificates or no degree at all.
Anthropology Economics
While some salary data shows anthropologists earning $87,000-$158,000, this applies to licensed professionals with graduate degrees working in archaeology, cultural resource management, or academic research. More realistic figures for general anthropology positions show approximately $50,000 annually.
The Paradox
In a world automating everything, understanding humans matters more than ever. Silicon Valley contains brilliant engineers building products nobody wants, algorithms reinforcing bias, and AI deployed without understanding social impact—fundamentally sociology problems, not technical ones.
However, this perspective creates value only when combined with practical skills. Companies needing sociological thinking aren't hiring sociologists—they're hiring UX researchers, product managers, and policy specialists who happen to think sociologically.
Strategic Approach
Study sociology or anthropology alongside something marketable: double major with computer science, learn UX research methods, get certified in data analytics or human-centered design. These fields matter as a lens, not a credential. Pair them with skills the market pays for, or face paying $80,000 to be right about problems you're not equipped to solve.
6. Art History
Employment Outcomes
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's 2024 analysis of employment outcomes by college major found art history with a 62.3% underemployment rate—nearly two-thirds of graduates work in jobs not requiring the degree. Compounding this, 43.8% of art history majors pursue graduate degrees yet remain in minimum-wage positions.
Canadian Context
Art history positions in Canada pay $36,000-$48,000 annually—approximately $20 per hour for a field typically requiring minimum Master's degrees. Museum curator positions, despite sounding prestigious, offer median salaries around $46,948. Reaching these roles requires Master's degrees, years of unpaid or low-paid internships, and connections in an extremely insular field.
Supply-Demand Imbalance
North America contains perhaps a few thousand actual art history positions: museum roles, galleries, auction houses, and academic appointments. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of art history graduates enter the market annually, with most settling for related jobs not requiring degrees at all.
Professional Warning
Art history professors themselves warn students. One PhD candidate stated directly: "My advice to anyone who wants to pursue art history is to have some kind of 'professional' double-major or minor as a fallback, just in case." When instructors teaching the degree recommend backup plans, the economic reality speaks clearly.
Viable Approach
Genuinely loving art history doesn't justify catastrophic economics. Study it as a minor while majoring in something employable, or pursue it at the graduate level after establishing a career that pays bills. The passion has validity; the degree economics do not.
5. English/Literature
Median Outcomes
English graduates in Canada earn median salaries of $44,000—and only when finding work in their field. The larger problem: jobs English majors traditionally pursued—content writing, copywriting, editing, journalism—face AI automation.
AI Disruption
The World Economic Forum predicts AI will handle 60% of content generation tasks currently employing English graduates by 2027. Companies can generate 50 blog posts weekly for $20 monthly in ChatGPT costs, eliminating the need for teams of writers in favor of single overseers managing specialized AI agents.
Skill Shift
The competency employers want isn't writing anymore—it's directing AI, editing AI output, and integrating AI into content strategies. This represents the hybrid technical-creative capability mentioned throughout this analysis.
Specialization Path
For those committed to writing careers, specialization in areas where AI struggles remains viable: investigative journalism, technical writing for complex industries, or creative direction where you manage AI as a tool rather than compete with it. Combining English with technical skills—UX writing, marketing analytics, or SEO strategy—creates defensible positions.
Core Question
Prospective English majors should ask whether they want to be writers or want jobs. Novel and poetry writing require no degree—just writing. Career paths require combining English with complementary skills through double majors or technical certifications. Spending $40,000 learning what AI does for $20 monthly makes no economic sense.
4. Fashion Design/Fashion Merchandising
Industry Collapse
Fashion Design graduates in Canada earn median salaries of $38,000 annually—among the lowest for any degree. However, salary represents the lesser problem. The entire industry structure these programs prepare for is collapsing.
Fast Fashion Impact
Traditional fashion houses that hired design teams now use AI tools like Midjourney and DALL-E to generate hundreds of designs in hours, then manufacture winners in weeks instead of seasons. Shein and Temu use AI to scan social media trends, generate designs instantly, and have products manufactured and shipped within 10 days—no design team, no seasonal collections, no fashion shows required. Just algorithms and speed.
Retail Decline
Since 2020, over 15,000 retail stores have closed across Canada. E-commerce has moved from 16% to 28% of retail sales, with AI now handling buying decisions, inventory management, and trend forecasting—the exact jobs merchandising graduates performed.
Specialization Survival
Fashion graduates finding employment specialize intensely: sustainable fashion (growing market), costume design for film/gaming, or technical textiles for outdoor/athletic wear. Alternatively, they combine design skills with 3D modeling, pattern-making software, or e-commerce strategy.
Direct-to-Consumer Reality
Fashion designers making money in 2030 will be those who built audiences and sold directly—not those with degrees working for brands using AI to replace them. You don't need $50,000 in debt to prove design capability when you can learn online for free and start selling on Etsy or building brands on Instagram.
3. Graphic Design
Market Transformation
Canadian Graphic Design graduates earn median salaries of $42,000, but 60% freelance because full-time positions have evaporated. Between 2020 and 2024, in-house design team positions dropped 34%, replaced by agencies, freelancers, and increasingly, AI tools.
Pricing Collapse
Fiverr, Upwork, and 99designs already decimated pricing—logos costing $2,000 in 2010 now go for $200. AI accelerated this race to the bottom. Why hire a junior designer at $45,000 annually when a $30 monthly AI subscription generates unlimited options?
Skill Polarization
Remaining jobs split into two extremes: senior creative directors managing AI tools and making strategic decisions (requiring 10+ years experience increasingly unavailable because entry-level jobs disappeared), or competing with AI and thousands of designers globally willing to work for $15 hourly. The middle has vanished.
Growth Segments
Motion graphics, 3D design for gaming/VR, and UX/UI design represent the only growing segments—all requiring technical skills most graphic design programs barely address.
Pivot Strategy
Current students should pivot immediately to UX/UI design, learn motion graphics and video editing, or specialize in 3D design for games and virtual environments. Adding coding skills—designers who can prototype in Figma AND code in React or CSS—creates competitive advantage. Alternatively, combine design with marketing strategy to make business decisions rather than just making things look attractive.
The Adaptation Framework
Every degree on this list has forward paths if students are willing to specialize, add technical skills, or pivot entirely. The common thread across all viable approaches: combining theoretical knowledge with practical, technical capabilities that AI cannot easily replicate.
Decision Criteria for Prospective Students
When choosing degrees, examine:
- Median salaries five years post-graduation (not starting salaries)
- Employment rates in field-specific positions (not general employment)
- Industry growth or contraction based on government labor projections
- Skills actually taught versus skills employers actually want
- Total investment cost versus realistic financial returns
Talk to people actually working in the industry—not just professors who haven't left campus in decades. Be honest about whether you need a degree at all, because sometimes the best education is simply doing the work.
The Hybrid Skill Imperative
The consistent pattern across all fields with positive outlooks: hybrid capabilities combining domain knowledge with technical execution. The psychology graduate who can also conduct UX research and analyze data. The sociology graduate who can also build products and write code. The marketing graduate who can also configure automation systems and interpret analytics.
These combinations can't be easily automated because they require both human understanding and technical implementation—the exact intersection where AI currently struggles.
The Investment Question
A degree represents an investment, and like any investment, requires maximizing return while reducing risk. The modern reality: degrees aren't guarantees anymore. They're expensive bets on future labor markets. Place those bets with full information about what the market actually pays for—not what universities profit from selling.
The people thriving in 2030 won't necessarily be those with the "right" degrees. They'll be those who adapted continuously, learned constantly, and stacked skills creating defensible value in an AI-augmented economy.
