It entirely depends on the degree and career path you are after.

I won’t say it doesn’t matter, but I will say that having the degree is a thousand times better than not having one at all, whatever major you chose

I graduated with a degree in French.

I’m a software developer. I’ve literally never used it on the job.

C’est la vie, c’est non ?

Depends entirely on what you want to do. For some professional careers, the degree is everything (engineer, lawyer, etc.) For other career paths it may not matter at all.

Could you find something doing “community development” with the degree you have? Almost certainly, since that’s an extremely broad description, as you noted.

Without more information on what you actually want to be/do, it’s tough to give any useful advice.

Some fields require a degree. Some degrees add significant value (you’ll gain more relevant knowledge in 4 years than you would working 4 years).

For some jobs, it is important. However, there are some boring white collar jobs that generally want college graduates for their soft skills.

It sounds like you basically got a BA in business with some specialization, so I would go for jobs like that.

So, I got a ba in political science and like two minors. I ended up doing computer repair for a good decade then got into a job doing purchasing then eventually got into IT sourcing/procurement. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I didn’t have some good fundamentals in reading and writing, which the BA provided.
But in the long run, it doesn’t matter once you get work experience. The degree is a check box at some point.

No, unless you’re in engineering or medical you’re winding up a barista all the same.

Those counselors who told you you’d be a loser unless you went, go for anything it doesn’t matter all you need is a piece of paper, they lied.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get a job at a nonprofit organization, spending day in and day out trying to justify your paycheck. You’ll get paid pretty good, but it comes at a cost: there will always be an empty hole you can’t fill, one that is there because you’ll never know the deep in your soul joy of delivering anything of value to another person.

Then, maybe one day, you’ll become a manager and get to do some hiring, at which point you’ll haze the potential hires by requiring them to go through the credentialism rigmarole that you went to just to prevent yourself from accepting the fact that you wasted your youth, just to make them do it because you had to. You’ll become a cog in a machine that perpetrates the injustice you’ve suffered, the ridiculous system that requires young people to go into debt and spend their youth pretending to learn just to get a busywork job.

If you’re lucky.

This absolutely doesn’t come from informed experience, and is speculative drivel, but:

I think just mentioning that you “designed your own major” may help a lot in various types of job search. Regardless of what the actual process is like (I have no idea), it sounds impressive, and makes it sound like you’re a person with a lot of initiative and drive. That could help make up for any perceived competitive disadvantage.

Of course your mileage may vary, especially if you’re applying for a job that would heavily revolve around topics covered by a very specific major. But sometimes it helps to stand out, and “I designed my own major” could help you do that.

I don’t know, but it kind of feels like they wouldn’t have taken me as a network engineer for a national ISP if I had studied business administration instead of computer science.

Maybe I’m missing the point of the question. Right now the answer just seems to be “obviously yes”

Depends what you want to do. You can always do consultancy work, those consultancy firms usually just want to see that you have a bachelors degree. Since that means you are trainable. They usually train their new recruits internally. You probably not gonna end up at the big firms like EY or BCG, because they only hire people from Ivy leagues or through their own social network. But there are plenty of smaller firms who will hire you.

And you can always just get a bunch of a Salesforce certificates to improve your resume.

I dunno but… For comparison, I have a B.S. in Computational Mathematics with a minor in Physics, and I have never once actually used it for anything. My current job required a degree but not specifically that degree. It is ostensibly one of the those useful, in-demand majors, but I couldn’t find many job opportunities for it that applied to me, or that I actually wanted… So honestly your path sounds MUCH MUCH better to me, personally. Plus your major sounds way cooler.

Can confirm, my undergrad degree has nothing to do with my current career. Employers care much more about experience than your degree. You’ll definitely want to tailor your resume to demonstrate the skills you’ve gained from your degree (Hint: Sustainability is a big deal in a lot of businesses today). If you’ve had any related internships, even better.

I actually think community based sustainability is going to be a huge in demand area as climate change worsens. Depending on how much you want to sell your soul to the capitalist machine, there will be plenty of work opportunities in helping companies implement sustainability initiatives.

Also, social work and community development are widely applicable across the human services industry. You could get a job in government or not for profit organisations. In order to qualify as a social worker you’d probably have to do a masters, but there’s plenty of community based roles that you can get into with a bachelors.

I studied criminal justice. I now work with electrical based systems for green energy components. Nobody gives a shit unless it’s job specific. I got certified and that’s all that mattered to my employer.