Must Everything Be About Money?

“If they can’t sell records, why should they get our tax dollars?”

This is a rough paraphrase from a conversation many decades ago about music grants made from the National Endowment for the Arts. I’ve thankfully forgotten who made the remark, but they would be quite welcome in the Trump administration.

The new version of “record sales as an accurate measure of worth” is the Trump plan to deny student loans to enrollees in graduate programs whose alumni fail to meet earnings standards. According to the New York Times, these programs, among many, many others, would fail the new earnings standards:

Yale University’s master’s programs in visual arts and music.

Harvard University’s master’s degree in museum studies.

The Juilliard School’s undergraduate and graduate programs in music.

I might comment that Yale, Harvard and Juilliard are also not “an accurate measure of worth,” but arguably better than record sales. Their prestige does help to emphasize the absurdity of the proposal.

The Times report said, “The rising cost of higher education — annual tuition for an undergraduate degree can reach $90,000 — has legislators interested in holding colleges accountable for programs that provide a low financial return on investment.”

Of course no students pay 90 grand unless they are from wealthy families, so that point is moot. But that darned “return on investment” is the prime consideration.

U.S. News and World Report published a list of top earning professions. Anesthesia and psychiatry topped the list, followed by many other medical fields, then tech, architecture and a variety of others. The list was not long enough to get to violinist, poet, sculptor or dancer.

Members of the Education Department and of the Senate committee providing oversight would be hard pressed to name a single violinist, poet, sculptor or dancer. Their tastes lean more toward Kid Rock and Lee Greenwood (who didn’t need no stinkin’ graduate school!).

I don’t mean to dismiss the importance of the “return-on-investment” professions. I have benefitted from the skill of anesthesiologists and may need psychiatric help before Trump is done dismantling our democracy. But do we live in an economy or a society?

I’m much closer to the end of life than the beginning - or the middle or even late-middle. The general dumbing-down of American culture is disheartening and directly correlated with the current political environment. While exceptions surely exist, it is broadly true that anyone who is captivated by a Beethoven piano sonata or Balanchine ballet would not be numb to the egregious cruelty and depthless ignorance of the current administration and their slack-jawed adherents.

Music, visual arts, dance and other arts are the way we express and experience the dimensions of life that cannot be quantified - beauty, tenderness, amazement . . . . It is a somewhat hackneyed notion, used often in education, but valid nonetheless: Not everything that is important can be measured and not everything that can be measured is important.

Government hostility to the arts is bad, but the cultural decline is worse. Artists will always pursue their work, but in increasing obscurity. Many factors contribute; social media, coarsening of popular culture, commercial vulnerability of arts.

And language matters too. These days anyone can call themselves an “artist.” Most popular music is derivative, mostly costume and pyrotechnics, and increasingly laced with gratuitous violence and sexual nonsense. The only dancers making money are the Shuffle Mamas (look them up) and their fans think they are the next coming of Suzanne Farrell (look her up.).

I suppose the greatest insult is the scheduling of a UFC match to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. I’ll bet every member of Trump’s administration and every Republican legislator will be on hand to watch one cretin try to beat the bloody hell out of another. It’s only a slight step above lions in the Colosseum.

But, to be fair, it is Mixed Martial “Arts.”

Perhaps Yale, Harvard and Juilliard can offer graduate programs in the inhumanities.