> There are huge ranges of jobs that a humanities degree qualifies you for that you can't get without one--- even a bunch of stuff that's unrelated to the degree, like HR or various secretarial jobs.

I think that's exactly the problem. Why should that degree qualify you? It's unrelated! That's what the article and some of the comments are trying to point out: we shouldn't have careers where the college degree is treated like a checkbox instead of being a relevant indicator of your ability in the field in question. What does close examination of Chaucer or Shakespeare have to do with being a secretary? Why would someone who doesn't have a degree in Comparitive Literature make a worse secretary than someone who does? The answer is that it shouldn't.