Writing at The Weekly Standard, Joseph Epstein suggests the problem begins with economics.

The loss of prestige of the liberal arts is part of the general crisis of higher education in the United States. The crisis begins in economics. Larger numbers of Americans start college, but roughly a third never finish—more women finish, interestingly, than do men. With the economic slump of recent years, benefactions to colleges are down, as are federal and state grants, thus forcing tuition costs up, in public as well as in private institutions.

Inflation is greater in the realm of higher education than in any other public sphere. Complaints about the high cost of education at private colleges—fees of $50,000 and $55,000 a year are commonly mentioned—are heard everywhere. A great number of students leave college with enormous student-loan debt, which is higher than either national credit card or automobile credit debt. Because of the expense of traditional liberal arts colleges, greater numbers of the young go to one or another form of commuter college, usually for vocational training.

Katie Billotte of Salon lays the blame squarely at the feet of conservatives because in the liberal world view, everything is the fault of conservatives.

Conservatives killed the liberal arts

This week in The Weekly Standard the essayist Joseph Epstein asks what has become a sadly common question:  “Who killed the liberal arts?” As a perennially overeager student, I can’t help but be delighted when I know the answer to a question, even if it is posed rhetorically. From my days as my high school’s valedictorian through the completion of a Ph.D. thesis on contemporary productions of Greek tragedy in Latin America, I’ve always gotten a thrill from knowing the right answer. So here it is: The conservative movement killed the liberal arts — Ronald Reagan, Rupert Murdoch, William F. Buckley and their latter-day heirs.

They have done so through a combination of decreasing access to education and demonizing academic culture and academics. Make no mistake about it: The death of the humanities is an ideologically motivated murder, more like a massacre.