The whole purpose of education is to make a better person. More caring, more empathetic, better able to socialize. This implies a clear emphasis on the non-technical side along with the technical side. What has actually happened is that the technical side has been strongly focused on while the non-technical side - the Humanities if you will - has been degraded. This is to a large extent a function of the reward system whereby people with a narrow technical degree reap large, if not insane, financial rewards and are lauded in the popular media as visionaries.
As mentioned earlier, this results in a stampede of students entering the flavor-of-the-month degree program. This has resulted in boom and bust cycles. When a large number of graduates in a particular area enter the work force, there are usually not enough jobs for them so students entering universities avoid that area. Four years later, there is a resultant bust as companies scramble to hire talent and the whole cycle starts all over again.
Apart from this, there is a major damaging aspect to this inordinate focus on a narrow technically oriented education. It encourages a narrow mindedness that discourages innovation. Every field develops a particular "way" of doing things; an orthodoxy. This orthodoxy encourages speculation and research in particular areas while ignoring others. For most purposes, this is actually a good thing since it focuses people. Unfortunately over time, the orthodoxy becomes stultifying generally without the participants realization. At some point, this will prevent people from exploring areas which may be promising but of which there is certainly no guarantee that they may be useful later on. Innovation thrives on the ability to ask questions and to go into areas that are currently considered silly. Orthodoxy on the other hand demands a focus on the safe. With innovation, we get radically new products, services and ideas that can have the ability to enrich our lives in unexpected ways. With orthodoxy, we get at best incremental improvements.
Why did Sony not come out with something like the iPod? The company had a major lock on the portable music industry thanks to the then ubiquitous Walkman. Why did it take a total outsider to shake up this industry dramatically? The same question can be asked about the mobile handset market. Apple was not the first one to introduce a smartphone. The device was actually pioneered by Palm. Why was an outsider able to shake up the industry to such an extent that the dominant mobile set manufacturer found itself having to dive off a burning platform into a cold, dark sea?
I set these examples to illustrate a point. A wide education (as opposed to a narrow, technical one) exposes people to alternate points of view and alternate ways of thinking. This exposure will result in a greater sophistication in personal mindset. It will enable a deeper, more holistic thinking. Instead of blindly accepting the current orthodoxy in a particular field, there will atleast be the ability to probe and ask questions. Who can tell what fruits may be reaped at a later stage from exploring an area that may seem irrelevant at that time. Steve Jobs, for example, audited a calligraphy course in Reed College. He later credited that course for introducing multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts in the Mac. Today we take these for granted but these were revolutionary things at that time. An apparently useless course resulted in major dividends down the road. Indeed the Mac gave birth to the desktop publishing industry so we can say that that course gave rise to a major new industry.
The point is that it is impossible to determine in advance what may be useful at a later stage. Casting a wide net will undoubtedly catch much dross. There will however be a few gems whose value will be realized later.
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