> Humanities are a mess just for the reason that they take tuition and time from students and leave them hanging out to dray, after they graduate with no direct job prospects (i.e. a way to make a living).

It seems like this is a rumor that refuses to die. Humanities majors do just fine.

According to a 2018 ACS survey,[0] humanities majors are looking at 2.13% unemployment, which is comparable to other fields. The same survey shows that people who majored in the humanities earn comparable salaries to their peers in other disciplines.[1]

A 2014 study in Forbes found that humanities majors go on to earn even more than their peers in other disciplines as they all advance on their chosen career paths.[2]

I'm curious why the image of the deadbeat humanist persists, especially in an era where we need people who have been trained to look at potentially misleading information, identify why it is misleading, and point us towards better sources. Rampant misinformation in this social media age has shown us that "the facts" are much more slippery than anyone would like, and we need people who have been trained in the subjective arts of parsing contradictory information and -- even more importantly -- justifying their interpretation to others.

[0]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ld4Ki99C_0WFUcyBXyix...

[1]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ld4Ki99C_0WFUcyBXyix...

[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/11/20/surpr...