This argument doesn't seem consistent with the idea that college should not be just a path for job readiness. If the purpose of a philosophy degree is to creat

This argument doesn't seem consistent with the idea that college should not be just a path for job readiness. If the purpose of a philosophy degree is to create philosophers, then we rightly should be subsidizing the education of those degrees which society demands (engineers/nurses/tech/etc). You need to take an entirely different argument to say that society should subsidize philosophers despite the market demand. The argument exists, and many people have made it. I personally do believe that higher education is good for society as a whole. So why not let those people who are getting an education for the purpose of simply being educated (rather than obtaining a job) be encouraged to learn a way of looking at the world through the lens of science? Just like philosophers, there is no guarantee they will actually do anything with such a degree. But the scientific lens that they learn will affect the way they understand the world around them, and that can surely be a good thing.