I think that's the wrong way to look at it. The argument is always practical vs. impractical degrees - but that's not all of it.

The problem is twofold, IMHO:

- Impractical degrees are disproportionately expensive compared to their earning power. You learn a lot of stuff, go deeply into debt, and wind up not being able to pay it off. In short: impractical degrees are overpriced.

- Practical degrees are (in most places) worth the money, but unbelievably loaded in terms of curriculum. Students come up as one-dimensional idiots, who have been impeccably trained in one subject area and nothing else. This creates effective workforces, but creates ineffective citizens, contrary to the humanities (read: most of the impractical degrees).

The two problems are IMHO rather separate, but the second doesn't get nearly enough attention. I cannot begin to count the number of engineers I graduated with who had not even the faintest idea of how politics in our country works - or some of the most basic philosophies the nation is based on, or even the most basic of 20th century history. Few of them appreciate art to any degree, and even fewer practice some form of it themselves.

Our engineering programs are creating idiots - people who can design bridges and write code like no other, but are worthless as people otherwise.

My experience has been that arts students tend to be more aware of, well, life in general - politics, the arts, social issues, etc, whereas engineering students were more or less of the "oh, I've heard OF it..."

There are two beneficiaries to post-secondary education: the student, and society (particularly, democracy) at large. The problem here is that the way things are structured, the degree programs that will most benefit a free, democratic society will make you broke, forcing people to choose one that will most benefit themselves only.

We risk creating an entire generation of mindless, uncultured automatons hyper-obsessed with material wealth, wading knee-deep through a pool of educated but broke people.

It wasn't always this way - there was a time when getting an engineering degree also meant a breadth of education in indirectly related subject areas. Where engineers took music, sociology, and fine arts... I've noticed a rapid decline in breadth in engineering programs, though, and IMHO this is a silent problem that has yet to rear its ugly head in the papers.

What, and your statement that scientist and engineers don't care about anything else wasn't?

Look, this is all anecdotal, but the CS/science/math/engineering students I knew in school were generally voracious readers, well informed about current events, politically opinionated in a highly educated way, appreciative of the arts, and involved in extra-curricular activities. They were frequently well-traveled, multi-lingual, and musicians. They were reasonably well represented in student government.

Maybe the schools you went to were different, but this is my experience.

If they had solutions, if they appealed to an analytical mind then you would have interested STEM students. Maybe there should be a course taught by top politicians, spin doctors and media moguls: `Hacking Public Consciousness'. I almost guarantee that this would attract the students you talk about.

The point is that, from my perspective, more people should probably be going to college rather than to University. It's not that we don't need thinkers, but that we need more thinkers that can translate thought into action.

EDIT: closed paren to avoid major bug.

Biology is even worse--- its starting salaries are approximately the same as most liberal arts fields. Does biology get to stay because it's science, though, despite having no better a business case than English does?

Meanwhile, my friend the psych/sociology major is out of work despite intelligence and conversational aptitude, and my friend the anthropology major works at a laundromat for what would be less than minimum wage in most other states.

These are people just as smart as I am, with much better GPAs. We all bought the "college => easy middle class" thing hook, line and sinker; I'm just lucky enough to have chosen a degree that pays.

The reason why the employers were so keen on them was not that they were going to use the subject itself (e.g. History) but the techniques. A history graduate can read _a_lot_ quickly, summarise it, and hand you a report. Those are great skills that are often required in a job (in some jobs more than others).

So impractical degrees may still be... practical. :) (that said I personally don't think a degree should be judge on how practical it is. But I agree with the poster above that if you do want to focus on things that give you better job prospects in the short run, then there are colleges (in the Canadian/UK sense of shorter, more focused higher eduction courses).