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Comment by chadcmulligan | Hacker News Reader

But future taxes are derived from people who can earn a living, if we have an uneducated workforce, to be a bit trite - education is an investment in human capital.

STEM degrees are not for everyone, and to exclude a percentage of the population from higher education is unnecessary in Australia.

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> education is an investment in human capital.

This is not universally true. At least, not all education leads to the same increase in human capital.

I would argue that getting educated about art history does nothing to increase human capital. You may have enjoyed learning about art history, but knowing what a tryptic is does not make you a more productive member of society.

And the fact that art history majors earn a lot less than stem majors on average seems to confirm this. Being able to build bridges is simply more valuable to society than knowing some obscure facts about dead people.

There was a time when I would have come close to agreeing with that, the trouble is the ones building the bridge are people, and thats where the humanities comes in, its the study of people, even art history is valuable, and who knows where it will lead, maybe bridge design, someone has to design the pretty bits on bridges and buildings.

> the fact that art history majors earn a lot less than stem majors on average seems to confirm this

Precisely. There's a market for STEM majors already - so why subsidize it with taxpayer money? Shouldn't that be used for education that doesn't have monetary value?

Why should taxpayer funded money be used to encourage people to study arbitrary topics? I'd rather they spend the money to encourage growth in areas that will drive the economy.

Unless you're seriously arguing that the liberal arts, and the arts in general, have no value at all, the reason is simple: the taxpayer should pay because no one else will pay for them, yet they're important.

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