It also supplies the degree holder with a social signal which says: I can buy into the establishment. I say this with my newly minted BSc. in hand. In the process of obtaining it I realised that at a minimum, all you have to do to get a degree is satisfy the course requirements. I took some shitty courses that I knew were largely wastes of time [0]. Doing them anyway equips me with proof (degree) that I can submit to a system I disagree with if I have to. This excessively cynical attitude is the product of being a cog in a massive degree making machine whose graduates are on average, I'd say, mediocre [1].

[0] I'm looking at you, three years of 'numerical methods', which reduced to memorising algorithms to perform by hand.

[1] I count myself amongst the absolutely useless 'applied mathematicians' from my class.