The things thay directly help democracy are well considered viewpoints, humanities research, journalism, law etc. Stuff that influences decision makers including voters hopefully roughly for a greater good although we all may disagree exactly what that means.

Nurses and carpenters help society and functioning civilization.

For that to work, what you need is for the nurses and carpenters to be well versed in basic economics and how pundits lie with statistics etc. for when they go to the polls, rather than to have an oversupply of English majors who go on to have careers as a Walmart greeter or become structurally unemployed.

In other words, we need more people with a minor in the humanities and fewer people with a major in it.