And, of course, Cal Tony is 1000 percent right that it's pretty disgusting that people would pooh-pooh the humanities (i.e. that which makes us human) just because they don't pay the big buxx.
That strikes me as a ever-so slightly pretentious way of describing a degree in Theatre Studies or whatever. Again, I say this as someone doing a pretty useless liberal arts degree (Economics + miscellaneous credit filler). Math is less "human" than Philosophy?
I'm always a bit skeptical of passionate defences of arts degrees since it's something of a privileged luxury to be able to take anything other than future employability into account when selecting a college major. Like the way people who say they don't care about money are invariably rather wealthy. In an ideal world you'd be able to find gainful employment in a field that interests you and earn enough money to be comfortable, but in reality you find a lot of English graduates working in minimum-wage coffee shops.
Has an Arts degree (Hell, is doing an Arts masters) and likes this post though disagrees about the part of 'priviledged luxury'.
The reality is that Universities are meant to be places to teach knowledge. History, Literature, Languages etc. are forms of knowledge and thus as legitimate (if not as developed) as Mathematics, etc. as a form of study. Anything else imo is anti-intellectualism.
