Libraries continue to exist.

Though I'm a little salty because my wife bought in to the lie that studying the humanities is what you do for a career, yet her acquaintances who "made it" mostly have low-paying but high prestige jobs and a spouse who covers the bills for what is, in effect, a hobby.

Welcome to academia.

I don't understand why people confuse studying with getting a diploma.

You can study all the humanities you want for free. What people (irrationally) want is to study them in a big building and then get whatever job they want on the basis that they know what some dude wrote 300 years ago in Germany

I think people are confusing two types of studying:

- Undergrad level: Reading stuff that other people have already summarized books/blogs/etc and digesting it a bit. These days you might not really need to go to school to do this.

- Grad level: "studying" as in researching. I'm not in the humanities but I'm assuming that becoming a leading expert in "Germany 300 years ago" is a lot easier when it's your full time job.

Most of the responses here seem to be assuming the first case, whereas the case that is "fundamentally impossible" without some support is the more nuanced synthesis you get from the second case. And in our current system, half the purpose of undergraduate classes is to subsidize the higher level research.

I don't mean to make value judgements on whether further synthesis of "Germany 300 years ago" is needed, but until we come up with a better system killing undergraduate courses in field X is also a huge blow to the research there.

This is a green heron since the issue at hand isn't "oh but you can study without a diploma", the issue is "you won't be taken seriously because you don't have credentials" e.g. piece of paper.

I mean, what credentials does a humanities graduate actually have? Who would need such knowledge in any job except for a humanities job itself?

Indeed, nobody takes us seriously regardless of what the paperwork says

The credential is that they were able to pass their classes, hopefully with good grades. Many employers want to know that you are the type of person who succeeds, not that you know some specific thing. University has basically taken the place of apprenticeships because employers don't want to train incompetent people, so they make you show competence with a degree.

How true is this though? At least in tech, I have never felt held back by not having a degree. How many jobs does having a humanities degree unlock?

Very true. Every job here is looking for at least a Bsc. You wouldn't really get taken seriously.

Should we expect people to study humanities? A lot of the best software is written by amateurs or hobbyists in their spare time. I'm sure there is plenty of experts on Greek tragedies just because they love it.