> Liberal Arts is perfectly valuable, but burying yourself financially to get a degree in one of the subjects, which is what will happen to most people who complete one of those degrees from NYU, isn't a smart move and that's where my lack of sympathy lies.

I'm saying that it is a smart move (if you are serious about learning). It benefits the students and society on an essential level.

> there are far cheaper alternatives (reading is free mostly!) to get that value.

It's not the same value: Learning from the world's leading experts, with all the resources you need (reading, just one tool, is certainly not free - try downloading some papers or buying a library of scholarly books), among smart, motivated, hard-working people, is invaluable. Do you want to learn software development from Google Fellows at Google, or from the local front end shop dev? What you get at top universities are Google Fellows in their fields. Do you want to study painting with world-class painters or the person at the mall? Someone I know is in undergrad at one of the top 10 schools in the world, and in every class my friend studies with someone who literally wrote the book in their field, whom personally guides their learning, lectures on it, and whom my friend personally and regularly meets with as a matter of course. My friend is serious about learning these things - can you imagine something more valuable?