Recently, Congressman Mike Coffman released a newsletter in which he dismissed liberal arts education — the whole of the humanities and social sciences — as dead-end majors and proposed using public finance to drive students exclusively into business and science majors.

His exact words: “I think it is time to question whether a significant number of the majors taught at undergraduate institutions are a good investment.” According to him, majors like literature and history “lead directly to the unemployment line.”

As someone who has worked in the private sector, in government (the Defense and State Departments), as president of a big state university and as dean of a professional school, I was disappointed by this wooden-headed observation. In academia, one of the first things we try to teach students, whatever the subject, is to marshal the relevant facts before venturing opinions.

In the U.S., any type of college education cuts the risk of unemployment in half and triples a person’s career earnings. A woman with a degree makes $1 million more in her lifetime than one without it. Why is it that degrees in subjects like history, English literature, or philosophy, as well as in business, engineering and science, vastly enhance the chances of getting a job and surging up the opportunity ladder? Skills relevant to many private-sector positions can be acquired more quickly on the job than in the classroom. They can be acquired and refined if a student has been trained to think systematically and critically, to distinguish fact from opinion, and thus to recognize gaps in their knowledge and understanding.

Courses in the humanities and social sciences do that at least as well as more technical and vocational courses. And they tend to refine more effectively writing and presentational skills. In addition, there are many jobs and professions where a knowledge of history, geography and of other cultures and languages are invaluable. (Think, for instance, of doing market analysis or strategic planning for a corporation or risk analysis for the staff of the Joint Chiefs or our intelligence agencies.)

Effective management, or leadership generally, demands empathy, an appreciation of the variety of ways in which people learn, perceive and react. Literature, history, sociology and anthropology are subjects with a particular aptitude for awakening and refining empathy, because they explore the enormous diversity over time, space and personality of ways of seeing, feeling and organizing the raging stream of undifferentiated experiences that constitute “reality.”

Quite apart from their contribution to success in climbing ultra-competitive ladders in today’s strikingly diverse landscape, a wide knowledge of the world, of the intersecting forces of demography, culture, geography, economics, and group dynamics are also valuable for an informed citizenry.

The American higher education system — and above all its great public universities, the ladders of mobility — have been the envy of the world. Now, these institutions are under assault. Twenty years ago, 65 percent of Colorado university budgets came from the state and only 35 percent came from tuition. Reasonably priced tuition opened the doors of opportunity to students from working and middle-class families. Today, that ratio has been inverted. State funding now covers a mere 30 percent and tuition 70 percent. No wonder tuition at public universities is rocketing to heights which will shut out a growing number of students.

Coffman’s proposal would sandwich those who could afford to attend into fewer degrees regardless of their aptitudes and interests and regardless of the nation’s need for graduates with a wide range of skills and forms of knowledge.

Narrowing access to the liberal arts would be another step toward a country of petrified privilege.

Tom Farer is University Professor at the University of Denver.