How bleak are our prospects as a civilisation when we reduce the value of a higher education in the arts, such as literature, to something as rudimentary as a waste of tax money. It is short sighted to think that since a "degree in poetry" won't yield a substantial dollar-value return economically, that it therefore has no value. Especially when several of recent history's social and political movements were in fact born of literature, writing and the kind of written articulation that characterises such academic fields.

And to your point about "free" education in Europe. The act of decoupling the pursuit of education and knowledge, from a high financial cost, is a crucial mechanism to ensure that institutions retain the freedom to pursue knowledge for its own sake, and to not be (solely) steered by the industrial interests of the status quo.