U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt
There seems to be a strong sentiment in this thread that the only value provided by education is the contribution to career (e.g. that loans should only be provided for financially viable courses, that studying arts is as useful to one&#x27;s career as studying finger painting, etc).<p>This just seems <i>so</i> wrong.<p>Optimising for vocational training means you&#x27;re effectively tuning out the abstract arts and sciences and... oh, the humanities. These fields don&#x27;t usually&#x2F;directly translate into a financial success, but they broaden our perspective and deepen our experience. And in doing so provide the tools and language to more effectively analyse and engage with human culture.<p>And to a certain extent, &quot;true&quot; art is antithetical to capitalism, in a similar way that &quot;true&quot; journalism is antithetical to surveillance (honesty&#x2F;transparency vs main-stream popularity), and I&#x27;d argue equally as important. For that reason these fields <i>absolutely</i> should be subsidised, otherwise art becomes about marketing, journalism becomes about propaganda, and science becomes about start-ups...