I agree that this is a problem with how humanities is often (or at least sometimes) done in colleges, and I suspect it's a significant contributor to the animus

I agree that this is a problem with how humanities is often (or at least sometimes) done in colleges, and I suspect it's a significant contributor to the animus directed at the humanities. There has been a blurring of the line between fact and opinion such that some professors think it is worthwhile to teach students about their or other people's opinions, as if those opinions had value in themselves in the way that facts do. This isn't to say that opinions don't or can't have value, but just having someone say "I think X" or "Professor Blah thinks X" isn't in itself important by virtue of the content of X. This is especially true if the subject of the opinion (what it is about) is something that is rather far removed from the realm of fact. There is not really any meaningful sense in which a given text, for instance, "really does" instantiate a Jungian archetype or a Freudian urge or whatever. But I get the impression some humanities scholars think there is, that when they debate among themselves about such things, there is a "fact of the matter". Not all humanities scholarship is like this, but I think the proportion has increased over time. To my mind what it misses is that the important thing about such humanistic opinions is not their content in and of itself but the ways such opinions are formed and what kinds of "evidence" can be found to support them. An alternative goal would be for students to read things, engage with them from their own perspective, and learn how to solidify and articulate their response, as well as (importantly) to elucidate its sources both in themselves and in the text (i.e., "my reaction to this story is X, and I think that because the story says Y but also I have had experiences A, B and C that led me to think about things in such-and-such way"). This is likely more valuable than simply being taught someone else's opinion. I think this approach is sometimes shunned because it is perceived as navel-gazing or having students "just learn about themselves". But this perception may partly be due to a fear of acknowledging that what I said above is true, namely that opinions on such matters have little intrinsic value, and therefore the students' opinions are almost as valuable as those of more senior scholars. All this is basically to say that I think the humanities could be perceived as much more "valuable" and positive if they shifted more towards the idea of "these are some ways to have a rich life, gain an awareness of other people's opinions and how to infer their sources, and learn how to extract a meaningful experience by careful attention to what you're confronted with in life".