At some point in your life, you stop worrying and accept that some people are indeed willing not only to pay, but also proudly state that they hold a degree in media. Mickey mouse degrees are rightfully smack talked down but at least we can defend them on the basis that they still teach something remotely valuable and attract a talented bunch.
Alas, I cannot say the same about gender studies.
Let's make one thing absolutely clear: parents wish the best for their kids. If it happens that you're a parent of a boy and a girl, you should know that the former is fairly doomed since he tends to underperform at school compared girls. A girl, on the other hand, statistically is more likely to get into university due to better results at school. Naturally, you imagine your dearest studying something combining her interests and a possible future financial stability. Be it sociology or media, mythical 'transferable skills' might turn out to be true, especially when the brightest pupils get into.
But in the end, she choses to do women studies or, if you prefer a more neutral - men-friendly - name, gender studies. A degree that not so long ago was just a small module within programmes of more serious degrees which was designed to calm down the darlings for whom right-left politics were trivial, as they don't address the systemic order, whilst foreign affairs appeared a bit too far from their metropolitan goals. But just like a cluster of other degrees that gushed after we had a wicked thought where everyone should have a go at higher education, gender studies became an autonomous degree exemplifying everything what a degree shouldn't be about.
Three years of one's life should be about learning and challenging previous assumptions. Definitely not about reinforcing the same tale, key points, and arming with ideas that seem to be true only in the inner circle of scholars of gender studies. The buzz phrase 'socially constructed' - a belief that there are no genuine truths in the world and everything is a construction, supposedly by violent white men because now we have patriarchal order. Patriarchy, gender, sexuality - everything is these despicable human beings. Hard to see how any this would broaden the worldview rather than bolster already existing prejudices and wishy-washy intellectual capacity.
Look at the way Lancaster University is advertising its gender studies programme. That nauseating invention by the feminists, 'I need feminism because' only implies what the subject is all about. It's not about teaching and allowing a student to reach independent conclusion. Of course not, it's about repeating that feminism is the ultimate good and only a bloody misogynistic fool would think otherwise. Imagine politics degree that would advertise its programme with pictures from Leninist part convention and people holding 'I need communism because' cards. Not a lovely image, I reckon.
But I see here a victory of free market that paradoxically causes harm. The evident ludicrousness of gender studies as an academic subject means that attracting numerous talented people is off the table. Unsurprisingly, the requirements to get into gender studies programme is dumped down and the content is designed to pander very specific groups of people, for the sake of survival. Those groups are mostly Twitter feminist trolls who get in a quagmire once asked to back the claims, women with victim-mentality, and boys who would do anything to get laid. In other words, talentless hacks who are lost in their search for a cause and thus getting on the board of something trendy and popular.
What happens after those people finish the degree is obvious. Lack of any skills and understanding then just verify those vile claims that the world is unfair and the system is rigged against women, as those extensive studies said all the time. But should we really blame someone for the fact that the degree in question is worthless pile of twaddle therefore not rewarded with jobs by businesses?
This explains why in the nearest future the degree will remain the choice for the army of ideologically driven consumers of higher education rather than a subject for learning. The fact that the degree has no application whatsoever, contrary even to a great deal of mickey mouse degrees that often are just university level vocation degree, forces the graduates to remain in the circle of the discipline. Produce same old papers about patriarchal order that will be reviewed by the same inner comrades of feminism, and consequently produce generations of skill-less women which might eventually actually create that pay gap.
I sincerely worry about high-achieving women who are being radicalised, victimised, and then deceived into studying subjects like gender studies. It's a con-job that should go back to being a one-term module people take because it's easy to bullshit your way through.