> society needs builders and plumbers, not masters of English literature and Sociology.

There's no reason why someone can't be both. Universities weren't originally designed to be job centers, that's what vocational education was for. This is also one of the problems that I see with the current system is that universities are just seen as a way to get a job rather than to be educated. The issue of people feeling shit about wasting their time or whatever also stems from this issue - they came to university to get an easy job afterwards, not to learn, and this belief is misleading.