As someone who works with liberal arts graduates to help them find their jobs, I think it's a travesty that liberal arts is as big as stem, even though the expected value and amount of jobs from a liberal arts degree is vastly smaller than STEM.

The typical defense of liberal arts education I read online is: "But liberal arts education has nonzero value, therefore we must preserve it exactly as it is now!" Usually done by describing a strawman world with zero liberal arts education, and showing that something of value is lost. For example, in such world people would keep doing science, but would completely lose their ability to verbally explain why doing science is a good thing.

Ironically, I think the success of this type of argument is itself another argument against too much purely liberal arts education.

EDIT: Now that I think about it more, I think there is a huge hypocrisy involved. People who are successful at math but fail at e.g. philosophy are describes as losers, a kind of pathetic half-humans. On the other hand, successful philosophers who fail at math... what, is there any problem as long as they can provide a clever philosophical argument why they are still high-status? (What exactly is the lesson here? Being high-status is better than being right or being useful, I guess, and clever arguments are still the best road to high status in the eyes of masses.)