If the answer is 'no', we have to ask why people are "4 years off work, 100k+ interested"?

There is a value to history, the arts, humanities. But that value isn't always well captured by our current society.

Optimization systems (like our economy) optimize for what I'd easy to measure, and ignore what's hard. A lot of those fields accrue value to the commons, which is value which is hard to measure, as a result their dollar reward is often lower than the value they produce.

There isn't an easy solution - and often when faced with hard problems the answer taken is fall back to the tools were used to using to measure.

How on Earth does it cost $450,000 to teach humanities to a class of thirty adult students for five months?

I was just taking the costs from most tech boot camps.