A rant:

When I was a teenager, I agreed with the French model as presented in this article. But as I continued on to university (in Canada), my 'inner discourse' turned into "How practical and valuable do employers see my education?" This turned out to be what I preoccupied myself with the most right before graduating university (around three years ago) and even now that I am in the US.

Well, it turns out North American employers don't see humanities or liberal arts degrees as creating critical thinkers. Or at least they don't believe people with either of these degrees are capable of enough critical thinking to come up with solutions to business problems. This means they are less valuable. They are lower on the critical-thinking ladder, so to speak. The only notable exception is philosophy majors, but even those are approached by employers sceptically at first. Anyway, because of this, it seems like your character, personality, and interests are key in deciding if you're a right fit. But this kind of opens up a complicated discourse on social dynamics, interview double-speak, and so on and so forth. Basically, more prejudices are at play, I believe.

This French model is good for personal growth, for creating a virtuous citizen, and a knowledgeable, cultured person, which was the point of educational institutions in part of the Middle Ages and, ultimately, in the Renaissance. France has a history of this stuff. Many writers in the 1900s spoke of how learning the French language meant learning about culture, philosophy, art, etc. Stuff that would sound "sophisticated" nowadays. So if you wanted to be cultured, you learnt French. What was the opposite? English. Learning English was many times looked down upon by liberal arts and humanities folks, because most people learnt it to conduct business. Learning English did not include learning about art, culture, and literature. Of course, there are very few exceptions, but this holds even in modern times. Most people learn English for business. To quickly trace its origins and demonstrate how old this concept has been in place (and how it is now phased out, which should tell us something about adopting it in its entirety), the concept of being "cultured" was associated with a specific type of curriculum that created "well-rounded" citizens. Being "worldly" came from the idea of "homo universalis" (man of the world, universal man) that was used in the 15th century. It came from the most notable example, Renaissance Italy. Renaissance, as in "rebirth". And it was called as such because in this time, it was a return to even older emphasis on classical notions of what was important for a society, which originated many, many centuries before 15th century Renaissance Italy. I don't think the answer lies in this type of curriculum.

My point: All this sounds fine and dandy, but how does this translate into getting employed, which seems to be the focus of our civilization these days? This is a rhetorical question (for me): it doesn't translate. The critical thinking part of this type of curriculum has already been put in place in other more technical degrees (such as Engineering and CS) that offer a better employment rate with higher pay. It is what our society has deemed more important and values more and rewards. We are ultimately to 'blame' for things being like this. I spent many years hoping for this French model to work and for people to change their prejudices and have people with humanities or liberal arts degrees live a decent life with a decent job, working in what they love, and being able to afford to start a family.

These days, I am lucky that I work my 9-to-5 crappy writing job (which is not sustainable, by the way, and for which I had to move to a different country to find) and cannot even think about renting my own apartment, starting a family, or indulging in a few things here and there. I go to work by day, and work on learning technical skills (programming, a few CS concepts here and there) at night and sometimes on weekends, when I'm trying to make myself available to my immediate family, so as to avoid getting them upset by my estrangement.

Yes, if I move out to the middle of nowhere I can probably find something with slightly better pay. But as someone with a liberal arts degree, I can't say cows and hay inspire me to continue living.