| Thanks for a reasonable disagreement, unlike the other respondent to my post. I was saying that govt should perhaps not give subsidised loans to individuals (as in the Australian example) to study things like art because: - the subsidised loan program needs to have a positive measurable ROI for it to continue. Otherwise, the next govt may bring it to an end, because there are hundreds of projects competing for government resources. - in a world where poverty still exists, programs that are more bang for the buck may have the maximum positive impact on people. I live in India where millions are poor. Some amount of money should definitely be spent on arts / culture, but probably 100x more should be spent on pulling people out of poverty, and the way to do that is to identify high ROI investments in people. - there are already other venues than Australian-type student loans for govts to subsidise arts / culture-type education, like university grants. - I'm not sure about the ethics of giving a loan to a student for a course that may not pay back financially, but the loan will with the student for life, even if payment is delayed till his income increases. If arts are considered important to society, is it ethical to burden a student with the loan? It was just a thought. I'm not adamant about it. I'm happy to see that we've had a good exchange of views, which is supposed to be the purpose of a forum like this. Thanks for sending the link to the OECD report. I'll read it when I'm free to learn more about this topic. |