Academia is insular and has adopted the extremely broad mandate of "making better citizens" which has resulted in a lot of degree programs that are utterly usel

Academia is insular and has adopted the extremely broad mandate of "making better citizens" which has resulted in a lot of degree programs that are utterly useless. Perhaps, though academia has been specialising in the teaching of mostly-useless knowledge since at least the days of ancient Rome, so it's not likely to be a transient phenomenon.