[wideawake]

This obvious fact is often ignored in the U.S. by those who wish to study medieval French poetry or other topics for which there are no financial rewards.

No one studies medieval French poetry anymore - they haven't since the early 1980s.

It actually requires hard work: learning multiple dialects of a foreign language, textual analysis of manuscripts, historical scholarship to identify references and authorship, etc.

Now the useless academics study Foucault, Derrida, and de Man - but only selections in English translations.

[Pecos]

I never claimed is was easy, just not profitable. Most high school graduates never do the math to figure out if their major will get them a paying job. I love history - so I took history courses as the non-technical electives of my BS in Mechanical Engineering.