We are seeing the effects of a generation or two that have been nudged away from the classics. I have seen students from a private schools that still mandate reading classics and some students from public schools who read tripe about homosexual identity yada yada and I can say there is no intellect comparison. Private school kids are higher on the intellect, critical thinking, and reasoning scale.
Reading literature, no matter your degree plan, makes you smarter.
The Trivium - Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric in K-12 makes for a terrific post secondary foundation.
“Reading literature, no matter your degree plan, makes you smarter.”
Yes, it does. Classics from A Tale of Two Cities to MacBeth. However, 16 credits could be shrunk down to 8 or 2 subjects back at university and I could have used the other 2 subjects for a second minor, say Languages.