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I definitely relate to your dismay. I think that (potentially as a result of, if not definitely as a result of) we have been accustomed for too long to being uncritical about some of the key concepts that determine how people accord value to things. Why is growth always a good thing (in the sense of "economic growth" for instance)? We're already pushing up against the limits of our environment to sustain us at the level we're abusing it. Whom are "useful" degrees useful to? Is making money really sufficient as a reason to do something (like the way that we define policy, for instance)?

The liberal arts college is one of the last bastions, I think, of a way of thinking about the world that is reflective: which encourages people to think in a way that may be against the dominant mores of their society, and indeed sanctions difference as not only acceptable but desirable. It's only through this kind of consistent reflectiveness that we have any hope of even surviving as a species; we're poisoning our water and our air so that electricity can be cheap, so we can drive where we want when we want to, etc. It is my sincere hope that there's a future for literally thinking about the world: not just assuming that things are a particular way, or that our values are in the right place, and the liberal arts college is one of the necessary breeding grounds for that kind of attitude, I think (which says a lot about the educational system in the US today, and probably a fair amount about our brains, too...).