Humanities and professional teaching

What should be the respective share of humanities and professional teaching in the Core?

I think there's a lot of merit to a full liberal arts education because it gets you to think on a higher level and out of the box. That being said, there are practical and technical skills students need to know when searching for jobs. When I was applying for finance interviews, the general sentiment from recruiters is that they'd rather take Wharton and NYU Stern kids over Columbia because they are taught classes in their finance major, which Columbia only offers economics. Columbia's new Financial Econ major is a step in the right direction, but I feel that the course selection is still a bit lacking. More access to Business school courses would be great.

Also, I think that Columbia should add a class to the CORE requirements (maybe a semester or half of one) in public speaking and professional presentation. Although Columbia students are brilliant academically, their intelligence is not always get conveyed properly. Social skills are just as if not more important than book smarts.

The beauty of a liberal arts education in the United States, at Columbia in particular, is that it allows you to explore many of your interests, to sample different subjects and kinds of classes, and still graduate with a practical and well-renowned degree.
A liberal arts education, with a focus on the humanities is not professional school, nor should it be. In my opinion, the undergraduate years are a time for intellectual and social development before committing to a specific field--something you study in graduate school or on a job.
The kind of training you receive from an open education in non-pre-professional majors is far more meaningful because it affects the way you see the world and approach subjects, problems, people, and, yes, jobs.
I for one am glad that I studied Comparative Literature and Society because it gave me the freedom to study French and Spanish, to take courses in history, humanities, art, philosophy, literature, with a little bit of math and science for good measure.
What am I going to do with this vast array of knowledge?
I am going to go to law school where my ability to analyze, to read critically, to write papers of varying length, to communicate in multiple languages, and to problem solve will be shaped in a "professional" way. I think I gained more as an individual than I would have if I was merely "pre-law" Furthermore, I for one was not ready to career track myself until the later portion of my college career.
It is precisely the open possibility of studying in the humanities that prepared me to take steps toward what may be called by professional training, but without the skills acquired in my humanities program, I would not be adequately prepared to study law.
While I certainly think that humanities programs need to offer pre-professional advising in order to help students tailor their humanities experience to the field they might be considering, I do not think it is the place for explicit professional training. I also think that you can learn skills like public speaking through presentations and seminars that require participation. For example, in my Latin American Humanities class, each student had to study and prepare to present on various sub-topics and to give short presentations on various countries. In seminars, I have been cold-called and asked to give my opinion on complex readings. It is this "real life" practice that has honed these very practical skills.