| Eh. I'd look at it a little differently. We need both engineering and arts/culture in society. And it behooves us that those who produce arts and culture are educated to a higher level in their disciplines. The Western capitalist system isn't set up to compensate arts/culture (at least outside of lowest-denominator, mass-market stuff). Consequently, we explicitly create government transfer systems to fund these. Hard economic activity -> profit -> taxes -> funding for arts/culture If we want to live in a capitalist society, that seems like a fair setup. There are alternative economic systems that fund arts/culture in different ways, which generally aren't as successful on the whole as capitalism. Are there excesses and easy dead-horse majors to beat in arts/culture? Absolutely. But part of progress is exploring ideas that seem silly, crazy, or anathema to people at one point. Individual rights and land ownership? Democracy? Universal sufferage? Everything seems preordained, looking backwards through history. Looking forward, it often seems radical or stupid. |
You don't learn how to make good art/literature in college, you learn it from doing. Most of history's greatest writers and artists didn't go to college.