Thing is, college by itself has only recently become about "being an investment".
That was never the case in America, and still isn't in many countries where education is free.
College education was, since the middle ages, a way to form a character, which includes the development of the mind, skills and learning a career.
Nowadays, at least in America, it's all about the money and the career.
And it's not just non-STEM degrees, pure science like Physics degrees have a lot that is there purely for the mind, not necessarily for practicality.
In fact, academia in itself is in the most part not for utility, when they develop something useful in research it's a mere consequence.