'The threat to our universities' - Stefan Collini

[Foucaulf]

There is a legitimate reason why the STEM kids look down upon the liberal arts students: statistics. Look at any major Canadian university and the grade averages for the arts school is lower than the ones for the sciences'. More generally, it's the liberal arts departments that are always riddled with claims of grade inflation and all. From that is the justification that engineers had to work harder to get to university and will work harder, leading to a good job at the end. The public also want to believe that economic growth is driven by a mass of workers engaged in constant labour, and stats like GDP confirm the belief.
The first problem: the liberal arts are not defined by grades, but by the transmission of ideas. The second problem: as much as we like to think constant labour drives economic growth the economic potential of an idea may be far greater. But the politician and the average worker does not want to take risks; when those risks succeed without their participation they respond through resentment.