No sense reading if it won't make you a better person?

Today, I came across an essay, Does Great Literature Make Us Better by Gregory Currie, a professor of philosophy. He decries the lack of empirical studies to prove that indeed, reading what he calls literary works makes us better human beings - as if this is yet another think to monetize, compartmentalize, sanitize.
The subtext is that if literature does not do something our philosophy professor deems valuable, it does not have value. Apparently we need endless studies to answer his question. And this, largely, is the problem with the state of liberal arts today. Literature departments face cuts, core curriculum planners question the need for courses like literature or anything that smacks of elitism like music, art and other ‘soft’ topics. It reminds me of something my husband’s ex-mother-in-law told him years ago about teaching English to farm boys in rural Pennsylvania. She asked a young man in her class why he didn’t want to learn to speak and writer properly. His response - “Don’t need no good English to milk no cows.”
Or, I suppose, to design computer circuits, plumb houses, practice medicine.
The professor ends his essay thus:
“Many who enjoy the hard-won pleasures of literature are not content to reap aesthetic rewards from their reading; they want to insist that the effort makes them more morally enlightened as well. And that’s just what we don’t know yet.”
That’s a nice dig at those nasty intellectual elitist still left. To which I say, long live elitism.
You can read the essay here: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/does-great-literature-make-us-better/?hp