Greek, Latin and the Classics
There was an advantage in people learning those things when they did. The Founding Fathers learned things in colleges and universities which had nothing to do with anything.
EXCEPT, they learned how to think, they learned what Great Thinkers in the past had figured out, they learned there are multiple ways to approach problems, they learned their place in the world is only one of many, and so on.
The insistence of immediate relevance to a particular job is the inevitable result of regarding the individual human as a worker and consumer with no other importance. (Guess which political agenda that describes.)