Students are not getting a broad liberal-arts education — nor are they being prepared for careers. A February Gallup poll found that 14 percent of Americans — and only 11 percent of our business leaders — strongly agree that graduates have the necessary skills and competencies to succeed in the workplace. But administrators and faculty seem more interested in quantity than quality. The vastly increased number of different courses and majors — in 2012 there were more than 1,500 academic programs that students could choose for a major, up by more than a quarter from a decade earlier — makes it impossible for employers to distinguish among candidates.

In its recent ruling that athletes at Northwestern University have the right to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board cited the case of senior quarterback Kain Colter, who naively thought that he could pursue a pre-med degree while also playing on the school’s football team.

When he attempted to enroll in a required chemistry class during his sophomore year, “Colter testified that his coaches and advisors discouraged him from taking the class because it conflicted with morning football practices. Colter consequently had to take this class in the summer session, which caused him to fall behind his classmates who were pursuing the same pre-med major. Ultimately he decided to switch his major to psychology which he believed to be less demanding.”

In other words, despite the fact that Division I athletes are making oodles of money for their schools, their interests are not being served by coaches or administrators. Athletes’ academics and future career prospects are being sacrificed for a few more points on the field.

But athletes are not alone. Regular students are also contributing to the university’s bottom line through tuition payments and the spigot of federal financial aid — yet their interests are not being served, either.

In exchange for their eye-popping tuition checks, students are getting a dizzying array of pointless classes that don’t prepare them for the real world. Colleges have gotten more and more esoteric in what they teach, more specialized to the point of being useless to anything but . . . academia.

As parents and students open those fat admissions envelopes from the colleges of their dreams this month, it is worth thinking about how far the reality of college life is from the ideal of a protective environment, run by people who want nothing more than to gently mold their children’s intellect and give them the best possible prospects for the future.

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