What is the value of an education in humanities? Nowadays, the answer is not very much. People are far more inclined towards technocratic degrees. Thus we have a large number of people interested in getting a degree in business or a degree in computer science but relatively few people interested in getting a degree in say philosophy. Why is this?
Mainly this is a factor of economics. The jobs market simply does not value a philosopher as highly as it does a banker. The reward system thus transmitted is very clear. Get a (strictly) technical education and reap the benefits. Do something else and you will be flipping burgers for the rest of your life. So students flock to whatever is the degree flavor of the month. In the late 1990s, the internet boom and its associated hype was at its peak so everyone flocked to obtain a computer science degree. A few years later, the boom collapsed and finance became the flavor of the month. So there was a general stampede for the exits and into finance. Earlier still, an MBA had become the flavor of the month. Consequently, there was a uptake in business administration programs. At one point medicine and engineering were hot and whoever you talked to wanted to become a doctor or an engineer.
However, there is a rather large fly in this particular jar of honey. As mentioned above, potential students get a clear cut message: get a technical education and reap the rewards. What is left unstated is that the rewards will depend on demand and supply. The problem is that as the herd of potential students stampedes into a particular discipline, the supply of graduates in that discipline increases dramatically. Unfortunately, in most cases the demand for such graduates does not increase commensurately. This happens even if there is a bubble in that particular area. As a result, potential employers are in a position to pick and choose. This reinforces the hold of the elite institutes like the Ivy Leagues as their graduates tend to be strongly preferred over graduates of other less exalted institutes even if the latter have greater knowledge than the former.
So we have a problem of a large number of highly qualified (if in a relatively technical sense) individuals looking for work. The kind and level of jobs which previously a Bachelor graduate would get are now getting Master's graduates. So the Bachelors degree has become in a sense useless; simply a stepping stone towards getting the Master's degree that will get the sought after job. As the number of such graduates has increased, this devaluation of the Bachelor's degree has started to affect even the top tertiary institutes. The end result of this rather skewed incentive system is that students are being pushed into certain areas at the expense of others.
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