I agree with one minor quibble: I don't think it's a conflation of education with economic utility, but rather a convergence. To put it another way, it's not so

I agree with one minor quibble: I don't think it's a conflation of education with economic utility, but rather a convergence. To put it another way, it's not so much a new perception of education but rather a new reality colliding with a 50-year old perception. Modern employment markets are simply more efficient in pricing the various components of human capital than they used to be; it used to be enough to be smart and good at anything challenging at all (the classical liberal arts value proposition is, I submit, fundamentally based on this idea). The "learning to learn" and "critical thinking" components of this education were valuable enough to demand a price premium relative to 1950s vocational education, but it's much harder to compete with a modern degree in (say) mathematics which, I claim, is at least as powerful in developing said meta-skills as a degree in literature (and has the added bonus of having direct economic value in many industries). Over time, market forces will adjust the prices for these two different investments accordingly. Thinking purely economically (obviously, there's more to life than economics), education in a subject for which no one will pay and which has no measurable positive externalities is indistinguishable (to the market) from consumption. So I think the future for these kinds of degrees will hinge heavily on finding evidence of positive externalities, or accepting that a degree in medieval history is better compared to a seminary (i.e. no expectation of economic reward) than a medical school. Edit/Note: I realize that mathematics degrees, done in certain ways, can fit inside the framework of a liberal arts education. However, all the mathematicians of my generation I know took as many math courses as possible within the requirements of their degree programs. I speculate that, even at liberal arts schools, mathematicians pursue much more concentrated curricula than the typical student.