I love all the people on here adding anecdotal evidence about successful English majors, yay! I am a proponent of the liberal arts & sciences and majored in something that many consider “useless” myself (psychology).
Anyway, something interesting from the article:
I think this connects to @snarlatron’s comment on the first page, about how so many English literature courses these days are obsessed with postmodern literary theory and literary criticism. It seems as if at least some English professors are resistant to meeting students where they are, which is silly to me - science fiction, fantasy literature, and children’s literature are important genres in the field, and analysis and study of those is important. There have been some pretty important works in those fields, too - Isaac Asimov was a science fiction writer, but much of his work explored themes of ethics and the human condition and the interaction between man and machine, which are all still important and enduring questions. Tolkien is often considered a master of the English language, and his worked spawned the resurgence an entire modern genre (modern high fantasy).
There are literary elements in a vast array of work aside from the Great Books. I’m not saying set them aside - I’m a huge fan of the Western literary canon - but there’s no reason that a study and contemplation of them can’t be enhanced by non-Western books, more contemporary works, and works outside the canon. And maybe a contemporary literature class or a class on non-Western literature (or literature of marginalized Western peoples, like Chicano literature or African American literature) is what gets students interested in studying English literature in the first place.