Terry Eagleton surmised that the decline of the Classics in English speaking countries started with the advent of WW1. Philology was largely associated with Germany so the patriotically inclined English took the focus off of them in favor of their own literature.
Much of the analytic side of Philology has been supplanted by Linguistics, a field that purports to exclude the larger human context of lanuguage in order to approach it as a "scinece."
Not having gone to public schools and having the benefit of a rigorous formal education with a strong dose of the "Cannon" of the Western world - and not just the Classics - I marvel at how truly ignorant and ill educated our "academics and "intellectuals" actually are.
When I was a boy, the fellows working at the water treatment plant had a better understanding of their civilization, and were in some way "better educated" than these imposters
And it is not merely about literacy: These folks are deficient in basic and general knowledge of Mathematics, Music or the Visual Arts.