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.