In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas Benton, “the pseudonym of an associate professor of English at a Midwestern liberal-arts college,” writes about why students choose to major in English.

English is, among my undergraduates at least, one of the last refuges of the classical notion of a liberal-arts education.

I ended up a Comparative Literature major because I recognized, however dimly, that academia would let me postpone a bit longer the pressures of real adulthood–it would let me savor, for a few years at least, the freedom to do nothing but think, and read books, and write . . .