Verlyn Klinkenborg, a New York Times writer, mourns the demise of the English major.

In 1991, 165 students graduated from Yale with a B.A. in English literature. By 2012, that number was 62. In 1991, the top two majors at Yale were history and English. In 2013, they were economics and political science. At Pomona this year, they were economics and mathematics.

He says that you learn tons of things from being an English major. With a humanities education, one learns “clear thinking, clear writing and a lifelong engagement with literature.”

All that is true. I took a lot of English classes when I was an undergraduate. In fact, I nearly chose it as a major.

In my junior year, I waited on a long line at the Bursor’s Office, after getting my third threatening letter from school administrators telling me that I had to choose major. I counted up my classes in English and in Political Science. Equal numbers. I checked my GPA. Equal GPA. I got closer to the front of the line, and the panic increased. I chose Political Science, because the guys were cuter. One of a series of life changing decisions made based on my weakness for the opposite sex.

Still, I very much loved my English classes. I also enjoyed the other classes that I randomly signed up for in college – Introduction to Piano Keyboard, 17th and 18th Century Art History, and History of the Roman Empire.

Would I have signed up for classes as randomly as I did, if the price of college was in today’s prices? Probably not.

It’s all fine and good for a person with a regular gig at the New York Times to swoon at practical minded students. But you can’t separate the demise of the humanities from student debt and gigantic tuition prices. So, every time you finance some administrator’s million dollar vacation home, you kill a humanities student.