This thread has discussed the relative merits of humanities and more career-oriented majors. Many universities may not be good places to study literature and history, because many of the professors don't respect the subjects they are supposed to be teaching. They have left a vacuum that is being filled, at much less expense, by the Teaching Company (now know as Great Courses), as discussed in a recent essay:
Very sad. Courses from The Teaching Company are wonderful in certain ways, but they don't teach people how to read and write. For me, one of the major benefits of a degree in the humanities was that it taught me how to read and how to write --- so I don't see them as replacements for a course at a university. A video can't replace live discussions and essays and the ideas they generate.
My professors expected all of us to read between the lines of a text, pick out the theme sentence of a thousand-page novel, figure out what motivated a character, and understand about different perspectives on historical people and events. Then we had to write this stuff down, essay after essay. After my freshman year, I wrote more than a hundred pages every semester. These skills carried through later when I became a scientist.
What's sadder still is that the people who are supposed to be upholding this practice with their own students seem to have taken a pass.
