Conservative-inclined posters are free to dismiss the idea, but I'm starting to believe that there is something inherently reactionary about the modern obsession with natural sciences and math as the only "useful" thing people should learn about.
On the contrary, I'd suggest there is something neoliberal about it. The modern obsession with STEM coincides with the rise of utility being the measure of a thing's worth, which is an Enlightenment-era liberal view. The old reactionaries held, and still hold, that the value of a thing is more than its economic worth of utilitarian value, but is instead inherent. Many of the postmodern folks will agree with us reactionaries in so much as we disdain utilitarianism but instead opt for subjectivism altogether.
The loudest proponents of the SCIENCE only mantra are not the right so much as they are the radical "center", the sort of folks who consider themselves socially liberal and fiscally moderate, the consortium of people who actually like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kasich, and Michael Bloomberg. I'm generalizing of course, but I do think it transcends the partisan divide.
Oh, the other angle that makes the right hostile to humanities fields is the lack of discernible conservative voices within those fields. There are also those who'd support investment in humanities in principle but do not appreciate what previous investment has lead us to in those fields. The complete politicization of everything has its downside after all.
You see "classical education" becoming fashionable among some conservative families, and private schools that require things like learning Latin and reading the Greek and Roman writers being a requirement. That's not terribly different from a liberal parent wanting their child to learn about Kwanzaa and Buddhism in the sense that none of these things are going to make their child's labor any more valuable in the marketplace.
