[fwipsy]

This is also a straw-man. You don't just need to establish that students should learn history, literature, etc -- you need to establish that 12 years of that is not enough, and they need to take an additional 4 years at a much higher cost. But why stop at 16 years? Why not 20 or 30 years? Clearly there are diminishing marginal returns. At some point you should trust students who are motivated to learn to continue their studies independently, rather than tacking it on as a massively expensive additional requirement to a vocational degree.

[BeetleB]

> You don't just need to establish that students should learn history, literature, etc -- you need to establish that 12 years of that is not enough, and they need to take an additional 4 years at a much higher cost.

Actually, I didn't get 12 years of most of the liberal arts courses I took at university. A number of them were completely new to me - no exposure in K-12 at all.

And you're being creative with numbers. No - for an engineering degree, you don't need to take 4 more years of humanities courses. Just a few credits that extend your education by (likely) less than a year.

[fwipsy]

No, we're not talking about defunding engineering degrees. We're talking about defunding (mostly) liberal arts degrees whose economic value, at least, does not justify their cost.

If those few liberal arts degrees you took in college were so valuable, why can't they be integrated into the k-12 curriculum? Or why couldn't you study them independently using free online resources, or at a community college? I'm not against people learning this stuff, and I enjoy reading about it in my spare time as much as the next guy. I'm just not clear why taxpayers should cover this when it's such an inefficient option.