[konstantintin]

higher education -- a period in which someone (you, the university and/or the state) spends a lot of money to enable your education -- is a huge luxury. It's a totally fair question to ask "what are you going to do with your philosophy degree?". If you're deeply passionate about your subject, then I think you can justify pursuing education purely for its own sake. But that simply does not apply to the vast majority of people studying philosophy/history/sociology etc.

I could already write and think before university and I had all the mathematical tools that most people ever use in real life. University taught me how to write an academic essay of adequate quality, but I don't think this is an essential life skill.