I'm actually at a loss to what you mean. Who's got a degree that hasn't earned them anything in this discussion? You? I thought you said you had one? Me? I'm at work right now, using the degree I went to school for?
I should clarify my stance, I think, for fear of being misrepresented:
The risk in getting a degree in a "creative"/"useless"/"not-profitable"/"not J-O-B oriented" field of study, which seems to be the various criteria here, is that unless (and even if) you're demonstrably good at what you do, finding a job is going to be difficult. That's true -- a degree in communications will not get you a job. Your portfolio will get you a job. Your networking skills will get you a job. It's exactly the same, in that sense, to an accounting gig or an engineering gig or any other "safe" job that you can bring up.
Would you hire a bad engineer? Not knowingly. Would you hire a bad accountant? Not knowingly. Would you hire a bad visual artist? Not knowingly. The difference between the three is that two of them have intrinsic competencies that are benchmarks for prospective employers borne out of their degrees, while the last one (potentially) requires you to provide those benchmarks in a different fashion.
By extension: it takes a comparatively common amount of intelligence, ability, and work ethic to get a degree in a mundane course of study and find 'middle class' employment, which is why those will always be the safe roads to travel, particularly among those who are operating at the income level to be college-bound. Hence the FED PDFs and things. The thing about colleges is that they don't care about how good you are, really, they care about how much money they can extract from you, and they'll tolerate all sorts of off-key singing and bad stick figure drawing and incorrect AUTOCAD measurements in the process of getting you and your family to cut that check.