I believe most people would benefit from learning the skills they need for a job rather than learning about China because rarely will a tech job require your vast knowledge of Chinese history. They want to know whether or not you can push code that the business needs.
I understand your point and I am not saying that these classes are useless. But at the end of the day colleges are there to produce for jobs and my point being is that if you had more time on tech related classes than classes you don't need then you would most certainly be more ready for a job.
When I went to college there were so many classes I really didnt need. Regardless of if they were "good" for me it was a waste of my time because I didn't care nor need that information. I took classes in sociology, macro and micro economics, accounting 1 and accounting 2 and so on and so on.
Did these classes help me in some way? Yes I would say so but what if I took an extra 5 classes honing skills related to the job I was going to seek after college. Can you really sit here and say that those 5 classes are better off? I don't think so.
I know I learned an awful lot about reason in college, and many others I know did too; sorry you missed out! If you read your Facebook feed and I study the great thinkers of history, guided by modern-day experts, I'm very confident I'll be far ahead. Unless you think you can come up with all that on your own - who needs Descartes or Hannah Arendt, apparently; anyone can figure it out? To disparage all that knowledge and learning is easy to say but very hard to support. To say those people knew and said nothing valuable seems like willful ignorance.
> colleges are there to produce for jobs
Says who? I disagree strongly. I know the parent's claim is fashionable now, but that certain hasn't been true for most of history. The liberal arts, which are not vocational, long (always?) have been dominant - that wasn't for job skills.
I'll add that few businesses value actual job skills learned in college or grad school. A new lawyer or engineer right out of school knows nothing, in many ways, and needs to be trained in real-world job skills by their employer.
Another thing education teaches you is how to reason effectively, the most important skill of all: Reason is what separates people from animals, the Enlightenment from the Dark Ages, science from superstition, rationality from hokum. And almost the first thing you learn is intellectual humility: I am wrong about so much, and others know so much that I don't and have such different experience, that it's foolish to dismiss them. You learn we are each prisoners of our own narrow perspectives and experiences, and that the more challenging another point of view is, the more likely it is to be worth listening to. So when you say you "laugh" at my ideas, I think you should have spent less time on Java and more on learning.