How do they compare to political opinion writers and TV hosts in this respect?
Political opinion writers and TV hosts don’t usually include a bibliography, invented or otherwise.
I would submit that the vast majority of humanities majors, particularly Studies, do NOT help improve critical thinking skills. Just the opposite: for an A, just regurgitate the professor’s beliefs. (OTOH, Philosophy can be great for learning critical thinking.)
Think about it this way: the first year of law school – loads of humanities and Political sci majors – teaches students to “think like a lawyer”. What that really means, is that LS forces students to learn critical thinking skills bcos they don’t have them when they arrive on the LS campus. OTOH, the students who ace 1L, already have excellent critical thinking skills which the other students rapidly learn over the next couple of years.
But as others have noted, K12 does not teach critical thinking either. (IMO, Geometry proofs are a great way to start learning critical thinking, but proofs have gone the way of the dodo bird.)
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What you are describing seems to be a failure of some professors/universities to present a rigorous class/program, not an inherent failure of the majors.
For instance, I don’t think any of Professor Greason’s students at Macalester feel there is a lack of critical thinking required in his classes. Just to admittedly cherry pick one example that fits my pov. 
I agree that some classes/programs may lack such rigor. And I agree some students may graduate (with lower grades) without employing/learning much critical thinking skills. Maybe that is an answer to the original question of this thread? Maybe the answer is that Humanities can evolve by ensuring more universities employ rigorous coursework that forces more students to employ/learn/hone critical thinking skills.
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And you think that a bio major from random state directional college who is preparing for a career as a 9th grade science teacher is learning critical thinking? CC likes to fetishize STEM but the average bio major is memorizing, regurgitating and forgetting in that order.
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On behalf of the OP, I’d like to repeat her request that further discussion of ChatGPT be moved to a new thread to prevent the hijacking of the specific topic in the thread title.
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Sure, as long as all the discussion is moved, including the discussion above. It frightens me to see educators asserting that ChatGPT is able to produce references and cite other works.
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absolutely not. Not sure how/why you made the leap from my post to a bio major? I don’t think you’ll even find a post from me anywhere on cc where I extolls the virtues of bio. (There are a lot of college courses that are memorizing and regurgitating.)
No,but I am equally certain that a humanities major at the same school is not learning critical thinking or writing skills either.
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Cherry-pick away, which indirectly supports my pov. Mac is a small, expensive liberal arts school. The masses are educated at large publics…
“Maybe the answer is that Humanities can evolve by ensuring more universities employ rigorous coursework that forces more students to employ/learn/hone critical thinking skills.”
That would be fantastic but my fear is that Humanities – all education for that matter – is trending in the other direction, to make it more ‘relevant’.
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But note, good writing does not necessarily mean critical thinking. (Think journalism today – a lot of well written sentences and paragraphs daily in the NYT and WaPo, but some of the articles exhibit weak critical thinking since they are pushing a pov over other facts/questions that might not support their position.)
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So it seems we’re in agreement that the flaw may be in how some programs are run, but the flaws are not inherent in the study of Humanities in general. 
Now the question would appear to be, what is the best way to insure more programs are more rigorous?
Is there anything suggesting humanities faculties want their programs to be more rigorous? That does not seem the current trend?
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I don’t know. But I don’t think the point is whether or not every single campus currently wants more rigorous programming. The OP’s question was “how can Humanities evolve?” I mentioned a way to help insure quality education takes place to ensure the students benefit sufficiently. That was all.
I am open to hearing any other ideas if you have any to offer. I thought @AustenNut and others had some good ideas earlier.
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Is cursive commonly taught in K-6 these days, and are most people’s cursive legible by other people?