Increasing the cost of an arts degree

and making it one of the most expensive to do is a mistake.
I know, "arts degrees are useless" - or are they?
The Senior Cat has an arts degree. Under the system here he had to do three arts subjects and one science subject. His degree is therefore in English, History and Latin with one year of Geology. He chose Geology not because he had any interest in the subject - he had none whatsoever - but because he had a good friend who was majoring in Geology and who helped him through it. He passed Geology but had much higher marks for everything else. Now he would have been encouraged to go on to a higher degree but back then he was doing his degree two subjects and then one subject at a time while teaching full time. It was not easy. He wasn't the only teacher to be doing this. It was very typical just after the war. 
He used his degree - to teach English and History (and help me with Latin). He went on to research the teaching of reading and the psychology of learning. He could do this because his previous studies had taught him to do that sort of research. It is not the same as research in the "hard" sciences.
But Arts degrees are about more than that. They are about our cultural heritage - something we are more than ever in danger of losing. They are about understanding the past, about understanding people, places and ideas. The idea that this is no longer important is disturbing.
If I need to help a student who is struggling with an essay I often ask them which subjects they studied in their final year at school. All too often the answer is something like, "I did the suicidal five" - by which they mean Mathematics I and II, Physics, Chemistry and a "soft science" like Biology. They did not do English, History or a language - the very subjects that would have cultivated their imagination and critical skills - subjects which would have given them the skills to write a well constructed essay.These students have study skills for the sciences. They do not have other essential skills.
It is no good studying physics or astronomy, nursing or teaching if you lack imagination and cannot communicate. I know children who prefer non-fiction to fiction. That's fine - as long as someone is getting them to think about what they are reading, asking them if they can design that "better mousetrap". There isn't much time for that sort of thing in the last year of school so it often has to be done earlier than that. Then we need to be careful to still cultivate imagination and critical skills. Science stagnates if it is not leavened by imagination.