I think the term "elite" here may be the root of the problem. There are implications that educated people are meant to "rule" society which may not be true (in

I think the term "elite" here may be the root of the problem. There are implications that educated people are meant to "rule" society which may not be true (in militarism, true democracy etc.), or that they have skills with no useful applications. Maybe we could try "intellectual workers"? Even traditional humanities can be used to please people, stimulate them intellectually, organize knowledge and persuade (rhetoric). These may not be trivial to monetize in a market but are still stuff that a developed society needs. Also note that nowadays we don't need boatloads of people to cultivate land with ploughs and sickles and hand produce everything. Maybe the society isn't well organized but it doesn't mean we don't need educated people (indeed, perhaps better educated than modern university system can offer). I think this blog post has some interesting points on history of humanities education for outside professionals: https://scholars-tage.org/for-god-and-progress-notes-on-training-the-medical-mind/ https://scholars-tage.org/for-god-and-progress-notes-on-trai... Besides I really don't like attempts to solve history by armchair reasoning, instead of empirical evidence. Like the first "theory" of empires failing. When it comes to Rome, there are some examples showing that indeed there were less "great people" war/statecraft accomplishment, but the more apparent (even to the contemporary people) and specific reason being moving to empire from republic. You really didn't want to be too successful because then the emperor would see you as a threat. There is this public desire to have an unified theory of how civilizations (or "empires", lol) decline. I don't believe we have enough of a sample size, even if we had sufficient historical sources. But there is always unrigorous thinking leaning towards whatever social views the thinker has.