Comment by foldr

Again, your rhetorical questions are straightforwardly answered by history. Humanities departments have survived for centuries at relatively non-prestigious institutions. It is clearly possible for societies to fund such things if there is the social and political will to do so. It may be that there is not, at present. Nonetheless, it is a vast oversimplification to suggest that recruiting talented academics in the humanities is essentially impossible merely because humanities departments are not profitable businesses. You might as well say that a country can't have armed forces because the soldiers don't turn in a profit.