I actually took an Akkadian course during my undergraduate years. It doesn't help directly with most careers, of course. But that and the other humanities cours

I actually took an Akkadian course during my undergraduate years. It doesn't help directly with most careers, of course. But that and the other humanities courses I took there and in high school make me a better-rounded member of society. Especially grateful for the Islamic Civilization course giving me an informed attitude toward Muslim friends and colleagues, and for my Latin and French studies helping my SAT scores and enabling me to immigrate to Quebec. My degree was in computer science overall. Though aspects of student life and paid employment at my university helped my career and skillset way more than even the CS classes. In my particular case, my parents paid for my education, but they could only afford that because US science education funding policies when they were students let them gain cheap entry to well-paying professions. Both of their undergraduate degrees were in the humanities. Before that, my one grandfather who went to college got a good education at what was then a free city university, and I'm sure it helped his attitudes toward my dad's education. Many of my great-grandparents were poor Jewish immigrants at a time when the US immigration policies were extremely open for healthy light-skinned immigrants from Europe (even their low-class type). I've had several high-paying tech jobs and paid plenty of taxes to society, but clearly these elements of my family history are factors in enabling that, not just anything about my career-related classes. All of which is to say, we all benefit from affordable education, in surprisingly broad ways that rebound down generations and across spheres of activity. We shouldn't take a narrow vocational approach to this.