I cannot imagine how you can consider
the humanities a "fuzzy" subject (translation: something only a liberal goof ball would bother to waste his time on), and actually consider something like "marketing", or an MBA or anything else in the business curriculum, a way for a real man to earn a living.

I got my BS in astronomy, which gave me enough math, physics and computer science to keep up with graduate engineers during my entire career. But without that engineering degree, the best I could hope for nowadays would be a job as a lab tech. Skills aren't important any more, degrees are. My skills in automated cartography, which I've been learning over the last 20 years by clicking the "help" button in the software user interface, is now taught at the graduate level. When I went to graduate school in Geography, GIS hadn't been invented, so it should have not helped me get picked for the job. On the other hand, my work experience in navigation and air photo mapping, remote sensing and image processing is what got me in the door, not the degree. Today, you can actually get an MS degree in GIS by qualifying on GIS software in a university environment. I've had some of these graduates tell me, with some pride, that they really don't know the difference between latitude and longitude. That is pathetic.

The purpose of the university is to teach you to think, and it does that by exposing you to others that already know how. And no, I do not mean ideological indoctrination, like you get in a seminary or a business school; you learn more from the professors you disagree with than those who you accept as gospel. Although I am proud of my science and math background, it was all those English and philosophy and psychology and history courses that gave me a proper education. Without them, I'd just be another smart-ass spic who could use a slide rule.

That's why corporations didn't hire you for management training unless you had a degree, they didn't care what the degree was in. They simply knew that if you had a diploma in pharmacy or Medieval French Literature, at least you were capable of abstract thought and deferred gratification. Nowadays, though, the market is glutted with graduates and middle management positions are becoming scarce. They can afford to be choosy and demand your degree actually have something to do with your field.

Once you know how to read, you can pick up everything you need from paperbacks, or on the job, with the possible exceptions of mathematics, physics, foreign languages, and music. And I've met people who can do that without university training.

The university today is a fraud in occupational training because it was never meant to be a trade school in the first place. Except for the few fields I mentioned, most work does not require university-teachable skills. You have to learn on your own, on the job, hands on. But it is a fraud because we have made it into a job prerequisite. It's main purpose is to make sure lowlifes and rednecks don't wind up in the front office. It's a filter. In other words, it is a form of charm school. It's a class thing, as any smart, capable, competent man who never finished college can tell you.

I am very proud of my university education, not just because I learned things like how to solve differential equations (which I have never needed to do on any engineering job I've ever had), but because it taught me how to think critically. That may not make you a better employee, but it makes you a better person.

Unfortunately, that is rarely rewarded on the labor market.