That's a false dichotomy. Nobody is suggesting that nobody should choose a liberal arts degree. What's being suggested is that less people should be doing it because there's more supply for those professions than there is demand. There's very high demand for technology degrees and trade skills (welders are in desperate demand, for instance). These truths aren't being communicated to college freshmen as well as they should be, and that's causing a major crisis for a lot of liberal arts college grads who enter a job market that simply doesn't need them.
Why is it a false dichotomy? Do you honestly believe that people will all of a sudden flog to STEM subjects just because somebody tells them they will forever be unemployed otherwise?
We might just have this arguement because this is, after all, HN, but it still astounds me how hard it seems to grasp for many here that not everyone is actually even remotely interested in programming or "building a product".
I am absolutely convinced that ultimately a society as a whole can only benefit from a workforce (how I hate that word) that is educated beyond the requirements of their day jobs. The more you are interested in outside of your actual occupation, the more these interests will also play into your work and thus influence its outcome.
We have a constant stream of articles here that tell us how people became programmers without studying CS etc. Why however do people always assume everyone else is incapable of learning something else after studying something in the humanities? I know only very few people who expect to work directly with their field of study. In fact, most of the people who do are the ones who will at least try to go on and go into academia. Most other people I have ever met were very aware of the fact that there might be quite a disjunction between their area of study and their future job.
