I think for the STEM fields you need intelligence as well as for humanities but its a different type of intelligence that happens to be to some degree mutually exclusive. but in courses like business, communications etc you dont really need intelligence like that, just reproduce the content of the lecture or the textbook, thats what i hate about my major (international management).
i can understand the government's motivation cutting them because they dont produce numerable results. when harriet beecher stowe wrote uncle tom's cabin the economical impact was little but when a computer nerd starts his own company he might have a dozen of employees and a respectable turnover 2-3 years later so the government feels like the latter is more important. they neglect the fact that a book like uncle tom's cabin is attributed to be influential for the civil war that ended slavery. so the government's policy is a very short term one that only focuses on economical but not societal progress.