Tell me about it. My boyfriend is in hospitality management, I'm in mathematics. Whereas I pull in enough to live comfortably in a single bedroom apartment downtown, he's on financial aid and living with two roommates on the outskirts.
What use would the government have funding market research for hotels? It's blatantly vocational, with even fewer pretenses to academics than MBA programs.
At least english majors don't have a profit motive!
Without getting into specifics, my bf's research deals with epidemiology and things related to improving public health in the hospitality/tourism industry. Sure, at the undergrad level it's mostly vocational, but it's not like there's no public benefit to full-fledged academic research in this area.
It wouldn't be a stretch to say that his work will probably have a greater positive net effect on society than mine will. But since math is a "real science", I make the "big bucks" (relative to graduate students, i.e., two steps above ramen-profitable).
In the hard sciences, yes. Much less so in other fields.