The modern academy is corrupt and creates degrees that often glorify the inane, if not the perverse. That does not devalue the authentic meaning behind the liberal arts. The point of a life devoted to contemplation, to meaning beyond the merely pragmatic, is to foster in human society the understanding that limited goods are ordered towards a transcendent end that does not fit into utilitarian calculations. A society that does not know this may be technologically sophisticated, but it is nonetheless barbarism. Civilization always required the sage, the saint, the artist to constantly remind folks to look beyond the time-consuming, arduous aspects of simply making a living towards renewed wonder. It's easy to laugh at folks who are today inclined towards the liberal arts as entitled snowflakes and the like, and students today are indulged and often also at the same time victims of indoctrination and prisoners of ideology. Authentic liberal arts actually protect one from that kind of mental straightjacket. Ultimately, the liberal arts are liberating because they do not aim to solve the world's problems. They keep one open to a dimension of beauty and mystery that is elemental and often lost amidst first world noise and third world misery.