Is College the Wrong Place to Prepare for Work?

I’m thinking about this question as the Chronicle of Higher Education writes about a piece reviewed in the NY Times:   http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2013/02/21/are-career-oriented-majors-a-waste-of-a-4-year-higher-education/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

One-third of  new programs [created at four year institutions] in the last decade were added in just two broad fields: health professions (where credential inflation is rampant) and military technologies/applied sciences (probably a reaction to the September 11th attacks). The 1990s saw similar growth in the number of majors. Indeed, nearly four in 10 majors in the Education Department data didn’t exist in 1990.

Any of us would recognize those new majors by just glancing at the list of undergraduate programs at almost any college these days: sustainability, athletic training, sports management, new media, gaming, homeland security, and so on. This trend, which has persisted for five decades, has been bemoaned by some as a flight from the arts and sciences to the practical arts.

This question has seemed…