Do the humanities output graduates who are better at thinking for themselves? I've read far too many accounts of people plainly stating that they just pretended to spouse an ideology in order to pass a class for me to take such thing as granted.
The fact of the matter is that most jobs in most industries do not require virtuoso technical ability, but they do benefit from close reading, attention to detail, a willingness to look at the bigger picture and challenge mistaken assumptions baked into bad specifications.
Majoring in anything other than CS, engineering, finance, business, or biology (premed) is a signal for intellectual curiosity. Obviously there are plenty of students with real curiosity in those majors too, but there's also many incurious mercenaries.
The fact that the humanities are not profitable is precisely their point.