Ok, maybe not pay more - however you could use the money arts student pay for tuition to offset the cost of giving a STEM student free education. If we are to make post secondary education a publically funded entity than we should examine it like any other initiviate and cut out the costs that do not offer a ROI. Sorry, but there is no market for arts students, again this is reflected in the average salary per degree and why the arts rank among the lowest. If we make it easier for people to obtain these fruitless degrees, all we will have is a higher stat in the "education rankings" and a mass influx of people who end up working at starbucks.
You wouldn't want a government worker / public office rep wasting money on frivolous costs; you would actually want a strict budget to ensure non wasteful spending. Thus far, no one has made an argument as to how a free arts degree returns any tangible investment (outside of the college experience and the LOL inducing "furnished soul.") I would be less upset on a government agency spending 30k on a bic pen than someone getting a free humanities degree; at least the pen is qualified to do a job and has use.
I also think we should end the stigma of trade schools and encourage people to who have no real desire at the university level to look towards a blue collar profession. At least if you dont have a passion for your profession, you should get paid a decent wage for a job you're qualified to do.
You mentioned the arts being over saturated and that its because the majority of students have an interest in it; I disagree somewhat. I think a high number of arts students get into them because the notion of a college education is overvalued, or put on priority over more practical trade fields. So theres this concept that i have to go to college, from that, the easiest courses to get into and complete are in the arts. So now we have a kid who feels like they have to do this, has no real interest, a C to low B average and just wants to party - ergo, we have the ingredients for a cultural studies or political science major.
I am all for people pursuing any avenue they want, but when you involve tax dollars, there should be a return on investment - if companies laugh at resumes with "humanities or arts" listed under education....what value is the taxpayer getting?
That being said, i support you being a tax paying, hard worker and that you should have your post grad paid for.
I'm not sure I like the idea of humanities students paying extra to subsidize STEM and other technical fields. STEM fields are valuable for the state to fund because they offer direct utility... Theoretically, anything the state pays for a STEM degree will come back to them through taxes, services/quality of life, and innovation. I'm not sure it would be necessary to actually have humanities students pay for something that it might well be worth the state paying for outright. STEM being a special tax on the arts seems almost punitive to me... "What, you aren't taking something useful? Into the corner, and you pay for all the kids taking the correct courses!" STEM grads will give back to the state in very tangible terms, so it's an investment, not a cost to be shuffled off to other less useful students.
What's more various humanities fields do have practical utility. Not all, in a direct "It creates a product someone wants," but some do have that as well. They just have little enough practical utility so that the rates we are producing majors in those areas is obscene though, and the state paying to produce more seems like a total waste from an economic standpoint. Film, theatre, music, and to a lesser degree creative writing all have a direct input/output with training/utility element which I think the training people receive in a university is beneficial for. It's really just an issue of how many are actually needed? Not many. In this regard, I don't mind funding for certain humanities fields, but simply not a free pass for obscene numbers of students - every kid who saw (insert big movie here) and now wants to be an actor shouldn't get to study Beckett for four years just to discover the job they have developed skills for has thousands of applicants waiting for each position. (side note: theatre, opera, musicals, television, movies, any large theatrical performance all have a need for a certain number of formally trained individuals, mostly behind the scenes - this is the type of utility that comes out of humanities fields, in a dollars and cents sense.)
Now, this is where we'll probably part ways, but I do recognize a value, if long term and abstract, in even the type of abstract stuff that is my passion. Go figure, the person who studies this stuff as a passion finds it valuable, but it is what it is. I think as a culture we'd be worse off if we made the more airy-fairy types of humanities inhospitable for passionate people to pursue. The perspective on history, art, and all that huzzabaloo that comes out of these departments is valuable to keep advancing and in circulation for the framework and referencing of those involved in governing, social engineering, for informing ethical issues, and so on and so forth. You can't point out many cases where you can say "philosophy creates capital and cures diseases or etc etc," but you can point out, on a long timeline, that fostering this type of thought has been important to furthering and informing ideology and thought and arguably civilization itself. I hope you can recognize this value even if you agree with me that the state shouldn't be dishing out to fund snot nosed teenagers to spend five years studying it just so they can get a job as a firefighter after. If someone wants to study the more theoretical and less practical arts, they should be prepared to work for it - because obtaining that degree isn't likely to put much fuel into the economic engine that drives the state. It might just, over a course of centuries, give a nod to the person behind the steering wheel that they should or shouldn't go X direction.
Concerning the trades, I could not agree more. One of my biggest fears of "FREE COLLEGE FOR EVERYONE!" is that it's another step down the direction of the overvaluation of formal, post secondary education at a university VS learning a trade. A lot of my earlier discussion in this thread - I think this one, anyways? - was to this point. The trades are exceptionally valuable, grossly undervalued in senses even beyond economic, and we're rushing to fund kids going to university with little to no mention of the trades. I dislike this and think it betrays an error in valuation we have on a societal level... A master tradesman is worthy of as much respect as a professor, and that position should be equally coveted. In the end, it will produce far more in the way of applicable utility, in any case, so we shouldn't be turning our broad-cultural noses up to people who work with their hands. Some of those trades positions are bloody *sweet* jobs in a lot of ways.
And you know, I don't even need my post grad paid for. I'll take funding where I can, but frankly, if this notion of "furnished soul" is to have any value and not be the joke you're making it out to be, it isn't going to be coming from a few years of cramming for tests, slamming off papers last minute, and getting a degree from a formal-education assembly line. The idea of "oh, you've finished off X credits? You've reached a knowledge milestone! Here's your paper saying you're a clever academic" always seemd a bit ridiculous to me. I've been tinkering around the university for just over fifteen years now, with no intention to stop, and after getting my first grad degree, I stopped rushing for degrees and thought of it in terms of "what learning will help me complete my next big project and inform my solution for/treatment of Nietzsche's big problems?" From there I have taken and audited courses in damn near every type of humanity faculty you can think of, pursued specialists who have particular insights I want to know more about, and done things outside of the university. Oddly, the latter part has been one of the most valuable things in "furnishing my soul," so to speak, and can't be discounted. Working in the trades has been one of the most valuable experiences I've had for adding context to a lot of my formal education. Now I have professors request I audit their grad courses, or come in for a day to speak on a particular topic, not the other way around. If you want to actually "furnish your soul," look beyond a degree program in the humanities - but by all means, include what the humanities have to offer. Kids coming out of degree programs these days are more ideologically conditioned than taught to be critical, philosophical thinkers, as far as I can tell.
Short story? In a "free education" plan, a stark limit on humanities degrees should be set, in my opinion. Their utility doesn't warrant a universally free pass, even though some have utility. Push the trades - they are criminally undervalued in our culture.
