If that's the case then the philosophy department should have no trouble bankrolling their program with accessibility for all on a combination of some wealthy kids and some majors who snag a job at well-paying tech companies. Or did you miss the class on inductive reasoning?

Maybe you're right. I was simply using examples to question the underlying assumption. You seem to have skipped over that.

I thought Philosophy was essentially pre-law.

Yeah, philosophy was a bad example of a "non-high-earnings" degree.

Sure, there are plenty of whack philosophy programs that lead nowhere. But if you go to a school with a rigorous philosophy program (which doesn't mean only Ivies/Stanford/etc.), you can easily go for a law degree or a finance job afterwards. Rigorous philosophy programs usually involve tons of discrete math and logic classes, and mastering that opens a lot of doors. I only took up reading philosophy material after graduating, but it is very obvious to me that knowing that in school would have helped me with my more theoretical/math-y CompSci classes tremendously.

Not even talking about some other good applications of that degree that I might not be aware of due to not being a philosophy major myself.