If you convince everyone that what you get paid to teach is not worth knowing, how does that affect their jobs? Liberal arts colleges are collapsing everywhere. How can you have an English Dept. that denounces Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelly, Tennyson and T.S. Eliot.
Oh, right. They call it “language arts” now. Pygmy war chants about killing small animals is now the cultural equivalent of King Lear. That’s like comparing a wooden spear to a nuclear submarine.
Hmm....I wonder how often it is that a student’s “Statement of Purpose” on the application doesn’t even resemble the student’s thesis topic. So this could all be lip service.
On the other hand, if the faculty is telling this to prospective students, they ought to go somewhere else.