Why are they even taught in colleges? They're more of a hobby thing really (and more enjoyable that way imo)
A "liberal education" originally meant that those who pursued it were free. They weren't pursuing an education of mere techniques, which was for slaves. Even today, there is a place for learning things that don't have a direct economic impact, as part of becoming an educated person.
That's from the more idealistic side of me. Now here comes the cynicism. Why? Because people still want to major in them, so that they can say that they have a college degree without having to major in something rigorour. And those people pay tuition. And the colleges like getting paid.
Sure, but we shouldn't assume that college is the appropriate place to do so or that the way colleges teach the humanities is effective. If your supermarket forced you to do aerobic exercises before entering, I'm not sure a good justification for it would be "well, aerobic exercise is good for you and not everything is about buying food."
I don't think the early comment that humanities is approached better as a hobby is necessarily wrong. It's quite possible that other approaches, like the Chautauqua movement, would be much more effective (my personal experience suggests it would).
Because that's why colleges exist...? Historically universities were not the workforce mills they are today. You did not go to a university to help you find work. Stuff like business/management, engineering, medicine, etc really shouldn't be part of universities.
A classic full university was supposed to cover the four historically major fields of study - theology, medicine, law and philosophy (which includes all the modern subtypes of PhD's e.g. physics, math, biology, etc). Three of these fields were pretty much designed to prepare students for the specific needs of knowledge intensive work (clerics, doctors and lawyers) and only the philosophy studies were less practical.
(I'm sarcastic of course. Sciences and humanities are both cool and good and contribute to a better understanding of the world around us, and one wouldn't be much without the other.)
For example, to me it seems like American politicians have way less empathy than European politicians even though European politicians have studied way less humanities than American ones. So my belief that studying humanities helps you deconstruct the human experience and see us as robots, hurting your empathy.
I do however believe that studying humanities makes it easier to answer what the tester wants you to answer on empathy tests, since you now understand those tests better.