Michael Bérubé, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor and director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University, and 2012 president of the Modern Language Association, recently posted his answer to this question on CNN's Schools of Thought blog: "Plenty."

"If you’re an employer who needs smart, creative workers, a 50-page honors project on a 19th century French poet might be just the thing you want to see from one of your job applicants. Not because you’re going to ask him or her to interpret any poetry on the job, but because you may be asking him or her, at some point, to deal with complex material that requires intense concentration - and to write a persuasive account of what it all means."

Bérubé cited Duke President Richard Brodhead, who has identified as exemplars Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Harold Varmus, director of the National Cancer Institute, Nobel laureate and former director of the National Institutes of Health, who each earned a Master’s degree in English.