[jeffdavis]

Where you are wrong is that it's not just about money, it's about accountability.

Smart investing is the same whether the returns are financial or something else (citizenship, etc.): Someone needs to make good decisions about which investments are good and which aren't. If I believed your romantic notion of the humanities reflected reality in the classroom, that would be a great investment. But I don't believe that's true for many students.

[skwosh]

Sure, through the lens of "smart investing", an arts degree is a shitty investment, and therefore shouldn't be funded. I just think that's a bit reductive, and that the value provided by those programs can be hard to quantify.

I agree that many students probably gain nothing at all from studying arts, but many do, and become better people, professionals, politicians, etc.

Studying these fields (or communicating with people who have (even watching documentaries)) helps to understand and contextualise the world, and to articulate those (often complex and abstract) ideas.

Of course, many people come away with nothing, and many with only the most superficial understanding, but an educational climate with less participation in the arts, humanities, theoretical sciences, etc would suffer a net reduction in cultural capital, political discourse, etc.

[*] IMO.