For most, they get a degree because society says they should get a degree. The value is in the paper that says they are a graduate. The educational value is highly questionable. These graduates then get many of the same jobs they would have gotten without the degrees, or those jobs where "any degree" is suitable. Basically, what they are paying for is the paper that the degree is printed on and not the education that went into it. Many of these same graduates happily live their lives once they get the paper without further pursuing art history or english literature. If they were truly interested in both we'd see huge demand for art and literature continuing education from the large quantity of art and literature grads. But this is not the case.
I don't equate a college degree with a desire to pursue that subject.
For many the paper that says "college graduate" and the checkmark on their resume is the value they seek because society says they need that. But I don't see many altruistic undergraduates getting the paper for pursuit of higher liberal arts goals.
Will someone pay me to watch TV all day because I’m really into movies? Probably not. You have to draw the line somewhere. I would be fully onboard your side of thinking if they were planning on getting rid of the arts in schools altogether but coincidentally, it’s more favorable for the schools to fund those fields because they get more money from the few that choose to pursue them.
Let’s also not forget that formal education is not the only or even the best way to explore your interests in these things.
You say that no one is stopping someone getting said degree, however often without subsidy/support it can be prohibitively expensive and that stops them. No one person may be stopping them, but systems doing so are no better.
Naturally, that comes with limits, since we are not yet able to function in a fully automated society where scarcity is abolished. Hence why the Aussie system caps the subsidised loans you may receive.
edit to add: I also support reducing the societal pressure that a university degree is the only path to success. I'd like to see much more support and emphasis placed on practical tertiary education, such as trades and the like. I think it's all too often an option that people dismiss because they're sold the lie that university guarantees success.
I don't personally get why anyone would ever do that, I always hated anything with art and music in school, but I don't want to stop them going for it. They need to live with the fact anyway that they might get a lower-paying job in the end and work in a field that's not related to their degree. But it's their choice.
If an country or person doesn't produce in demand skills and produce in demand products, then it doesn't have any leverage with which to get the things it demands itself. An example of one such demand might be... a freely accessable largely tax funded teriary education system.
If we can't fund good education, then our living standards fall rapidly. Its the governments job to protect our living standards, and thus they might take interest in pushing people towards in demand skills.
This doesn't have to be as grotesque as you might think. Note that in the past, while University has always been 'open' in the sense that candidates are free to persue any course that they provide, student population was much, much lower. A bigger potion of the countries skills were much more commonly attained by on the job training, and apprenticeships, which are implicitly market driven.
Is that a student that picks up poorly demanded skills and can't attain reasonable income, long term won't pay into the tax system that allowed them to do that.
At certain level that would become unsustainable through the generations.
- Education is costly and only way it is affordable if the government provides subsidies both to the institution and to the banks for education loan.
- The government has limited resources and has to allocate funds for many other things other than education.
- In this scenario its prudent that government does a priority allocation.
That's why spending four years living your good life at college shouldn't be the focus--because you'll have decades more, and it's more important to get 50+ years right than it is to get 4.