Hacker News Reader

Comment by _qjt0 | Hacker News Reader

> things which cannot be measured in next quarter.

I'm all for long-term investments, but can these ever be measured? If not, it will take more than your claims to convince me that it's worth investing in.

There are other ways to appreciate art and culture, such as visiting museums, reading books, watching documentaries or other youtube videos on these topics, etc. These are all free or much cheaper than a course in a college. You haven't demonstrated how an academic setting is better and worth the cost.

Govt doesn't need to subsidise industry. I'd be fine if these loans are issued by private investors, as with Lambda school.

> capitalistic profit seeker is also a wasteful exercise

No, their benefit can be measured in GDP. Imperfect, sure, but 100x better than your hand-waving claims. No personal offence intended.

View on HN

>There are other ways to appreciate art and culture, such as visiting museums, reading books, watching documentaries or other youtube videos on these topics, etc. These are all free or much cheaper than a course in a college. You haven't demonstrated how an academic setting is better and worth the cost.

Academics is necessary to teach people how to create, understand and appreciate Art and Culture. People writing books (not necessarily, but most probably) have a degree in Language and Literature, people creating documentaries have a degree in Film-making etc. If you think these skills can be obtained from reading books, watching videos on YouTube etc, then the same thing can be said about STEM fields as well.

> Academics is necessary to teach people how to [...] understand and appreciate Art and Culture.

Any evidence in favor of that claim?

> If you think these skills can be obtained from reading books

I didn't say that nobody should study these fields; just that they needn't do so on taxpayer money.

Here is the OECD report http://www.oecd.org/education/ceri/arts.htm which stresses the importance of Arts in education and benefits of arts to students (even students of non-arts subjects). They also conclude that "The arts have been in existence since the earliest humans, are parts of all cultures, and are a major domain of human experience, just like science, technology, mathematics, and humanities. In that respect, they are important in their own rights for education."

Some Universities have Arts appreciation course for non-arts students who are interested in knowing, understanding and appreciating Art.

>just that they needn't do so on taxpayer money

May I know the rationale behind this? If I understand correctly, what you're trying to say is that letting people study these subjects on taxpayers money is a waste of public money, which I think is not true. There are people with Academic arts background who have contributed to the society. Even (for the sake of argument) if these are not economically rewarding areas of study, is it justified that the whole field of arts which has been there almost since the beginning of mankind to be not funded by the government just because the system under which we currently live doesn't find it profitable? Is it justified to deny access to an entire group of people who are interested to study Arts but they can't because they don't have the money to pursue it?.

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.

> There are other ways to appreciate art and culture, such as visiting museums, reading books, watching documentaries or other youtube videos on these topics, et

And who becomes incharge of those museums? Who makes those documentaries and those books?

Someone not studying with taxpayer money.

So rich pretencious snob becomes incharge of the culture?

Since it doesn't seem like either of us is going to change the other's mind, let's move on from this debate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com