I have two degrees in the Humanities, both from top notch schools. As I think about it, very little of what I learned then has proven the least bit useful, either practically, or in terms of helping me be a better person.
On the contrary, what happens in most Humanities departments in the country is the OPPOSITE: people are taught to be nasty to ideological Others–conservatives–and to believe ideas about foreign policy and economics that are diametrically WRONG. Our kids are literally taught to be stupider, and to be worse citizens, who are less responsible, less able to engage in rational debate, and less able to draw cause and effect lessons in arenas that actually matter.
Here, then, is my proposal: rate all academic subjects in terms of their economic usefulness, then pair the tuition with the return on investment.. Biology, Computer Science, Engineering: all of those rate really well. French, English, History, Political Science: not so much. Frankly, it is hard to see ANY usefulness. I don’t see it.
Most of our public universities are stressed, are they not? Taxpayer dollars are spent subsidizing students across the board, but we could make it so useful professional studies are HEAVILY subsidized–even making certain subjects free for qualified candidates; and students of less useful, useless, or counterproductive fields of study would either be asked to pay the full, actual cost of their “education”, or even to subsidize the people who won’t be working in coffee shops, complaining about rich people, and giving their money to Michael Moore to make more movies about the evils of making money.
This actually could be done. What would likely happen is that most Humanities Departments would be decimated, and those that survived would have to actually produce a useful product: graduates able to think well, express themselves well, and able to locate themselves contextually in the world the rest of us live in.
I will add that the most useful things for me in terms of learning to think have been aggressively going out and finding people who disagreed with me, to debate with; reading the work of Edward de Bono; and doing manual labor. There is something about having a concrete task to accomplish which is either done or not done, and physically there, that has been very useful to me.
Actually, here’s another idea: all new buildings have to be built by students. That would be interesting, if impractical.