When entitlement becomes an end in itself, you end up with people who are shocked when they’re told they can’t always get what they want. An Aussie, James Norman, says he was “surprised to learn my career is actually a ‘lifestyle choice’.”
We appear to have reached the point in Australia where pursuing a creative career is considered a “lifestyle choice”. One that won’t lead to satisfactory career or economic outcomes, and is therefore unworthy of government assistance.
To put this in context, he’s not referring to the career itself, but to pursuing a particular career. Does he believe there’s an invisible hand pushing him? Hardly. It’s a rather common use of the word “choice.” Go to college and pick your major. That’s a choice. If he’s surprised, then it’s unlikely that pursuing a career in English would be the right choice for him. Every college student makes a choice of what major to pursue. For each of them, it’s a choice.
But that’s not his real issue. He’s not that much of an idiot. What he’s upset about is that his choice, what he refers to as “creative careers,” will be denied support.
Under the recent overhaul of the vocational loans scheme proposed by the federal government, some 500 diplomas in the creative industries are set to be stripped of access to government loans. That means thousands of students will no longer be able to access loans to cover their upfront fees – which can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
No one is saying you can’t go to college to study Shakespearean Theatre, but that the scarce resource of public funds isn’t going to be allocated to enable you to do so. If you want to do so, you’re on your own.
According to education minister Simon Birmingham: “Currently there are far too many courses that are being subsidised that are used simply to boost enrolments or provide ‘lifestyle’ choices but don’t lead to work.”
Is every student entitled to be subsidized to study whatever strikes their fancy? Does society need to pay for more English majors who will never write a book, or theater majors to keep the ranks of food servers filled?
But then, what if this produced a society of air conditioning repairmen, devoid of writers or filmmakers? Do the arts not fulfill a societal need as well?
Arts provides the foundation for creative and innovative thinking that can be applied in many areas of work and society at large. At present, Australian artists, filmmakers and musicians are well represented and recognised internationally. But if we cease to nurture our arts and culture at home – we will soon cease to make waves outside Australia.
The disconnect here isn’t that the creative arts aren’t worthwhile. They are. What a miserable world we would have without great books to read and music to hear and film to watch. And as Norman correctly notes, the arts contribute significantly to the economy.
But are great and successful musicians made in college? And will there be a dearth of great musicians if they aren’t subsidized in their major? In contrast, an English professor confesses his experience:
This past spring I took a position as a visiting writer at a well-respected MFA program. My students were by and large intelligent and serious, but there were a few moments when I found them—what’s the word I’m looking for here—exasperating.
One day before the fiction workshop, for instance, we got into a discussion about the Best American Short Stories series, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. To my astonishment, a number of students made comments indicating their disdain for the annual anthology.
“Wait a second,” I said. “The stories in those collections are always great.”
There was an awkward pause. Then one of them said, “You’re being ironic, right?”
His class, a group of students who had as yet achieved absolutely nothing, were disdainful of writers whose work was included in the anthology of Best American Short Stories.
At this point, I sort of lost it. I told my students that they had every right to dislike particular stories, but that dismissing them entirely was foolish. Then I added something along the lines of, “Why don’t you guys publish a story in Best American and then you can sit in judgment of them.”
It was not my finest moment as a teacher. (And, for the record, I later apologized to the entire class.) It was an impulsive reaction to what I’ve come to think of over the years as the Problem of Entitlement.
While expressing disgust at the arrogant little shits might not be the best pedagogy, his point was clear and sound. More importantly, it reflects a shift in attitude by unaccomplished students who suffer from the Problem of Entitlement.
My students were actually in a kind of quiet panic. Most of them had made significant sacrifices to attend graduate school. They were taking a big risk, both financially and psychologically. And they were smart enough to recognize, on some level, that the odds against their ever placing a story in the Best American anthology were pretty steep.
Rather than face the reality of their challenge—that they were going to have to spend thousands of doubt-choked hours working to improve and absorb tons of rejection and live in a state of economic and creative insecurity—they defaulted to a more convenient reality: that such anthologies are full of hacks whose success (as one student was later kind enough to explain to me) boils down to nepotism.
This was, obviously, a lifestyle choice, to spend coin and opportunity to become a writer, to fulfill the dream of becoming the great novelist or playwright. And the hard reality is that few, if any, will achieve that dream. And the money spent, time lost, will be wasted. Just because they want to be great writers doesn’t mean they will. Just because they think so very highly of themselves doesn’t mean anyone else will ever want to read anything they write.
But the harsh truth looming over students of writing, as compared with those studying law or medicine or engineering, is that only a fraction will find success in their chosen field—that is, will go on to publish books—and most of these will have to discover other means of supporting themselves and their families. Just graduating from a writing program doesn’t make you an author, let alone a celebrated one. It’s only the beginning of the process.
No one would want a society comprised of only refrigerator repairmen, or lawyers, but no one is entitled to success in their lifestyle choice either. Is money spent on students who choose a career that will never love them as much as they love themselves well spent? Then again, one of those students could be the next Shakespeare or Mozart, neither of whom had college degrees it’s worth noting, and would we not be a far poorer society without them?
Money is a scarce resource. It has to come from somewhere, which too many people fail to grasp. Allocating it is an important issue, and it would be far more palatable if the little shits didn’t feel so aggressively entitled to it. But then, they’re still little shits, and don’t know any better because we’re enabling them to feel the unwarranted self-esteem so that they can arrogantly look down upon people who have achieved things they never will.
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Well, we can just keep borrowing as much money as it takes. That has hardly proven any obstacle.
Just take out that sharpie and write fifty trillion on the nickel. Problem solved.
But we need inflation, right? That’s why we “quantitative eased” so much.
Can we just cut to the chase?
“Money is a scarce resource. It has to come from somewhere,”
Wait, what? After all these years of being told “wealth isn’t a zero sum game” you’re now telling me that isn’t true, that money allocated to one person/place means there’s less (or none) for others?!?!? Say it isn’t so!
I am sincerely sorry that your grasp of the world is simplistic, or that you are so fragile that not appreciating your brilliance has destroyed your ego, but you are not my personal responsibility.
Haha! It’s really comical watching your tantrums anytime anyone (not just me!) disagrees with you.
That must be why you win the internet and I lose.
Ignore SHG. I think your special combination of stupidity, narcissism and terminal butthurt make you sexy. I laugh with you, not at you (like everybody else). Haha!
“they defaulted to a more convenient reality: that such anthologies are full of hacks whose success (as one student was later kind enough to explain to me) boils down to nepotism.”
That is the classic excuse of mediocre hacks who can’t figure out why they aren’t selling: “the system is rigged! You have to know someone to get published” (No, you have to know how to write), “they’re too scared of my dangerous, radical politics” (No, your writing is full of clichés and cardboard stock characters and your ideas were radical back in the 1840s), “the liberal elites in publishing hate conservative science-fiction!” (See previous note about clichés and cardboard characters and knowing how to write, because I’ve read your stuff and it sucks and how the hell it got published in the first place is beyond me. Also you *did* get published, so your argument is even stupider), etc, etc, etc.
This is almost an excellent comment. Nothing narcissistic about it. The only issue is your gratuitous dive down the rabbit hole on conservative science fiction. So close.
I’m getting better at reading the math captchas, too!
The decision not to fund certain majors comes from an assumption that the purpose of college is to prepare the student for a job that will allow them to repay the costs. A reasonable POV in today’s culture, and one that applies equally well to trade schools.
It is a different assumption than the more traditional purpose of college, that it was to prepare young adults to become educated members of our society. Trade schools did not share that purpose.
The old school notion of a liberal arts education is, unfortunately, dead. This is an age of specialization, whether in a trade or discipline. Worse yet, the idea of a classical liberal arts education is anathema to students calling for more “culturally relevant” education, like ignoring white European writers in favor of writers based on race or gender.
You realize that what this really meant, traditionally, was “to prepare young adults from upper class families to become acceptable members of the upper class?” It made sense when a college education was only accessible to the privileged, and served as a badge of membership in a privileged class. However, since “gentleman” ceased to be an acceptable description of one’s occupation, that has become increasingly untrue.
Wait, what? So what am I supposed to do with all my gentleman calling cards now? This is a problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZVkW9p-cCU
Sorry, I just could not help myself. Perhaps I need the professional help of a Gentleman.
The approach taken in Australia makes complete sense to me. Said another way with some extension, yes, let’s loan money for students to pursue such-and-such an academic major if actuarial analysis shows that the graduate after a lifetime of work will return the opportunity cost of the loan through income taxes paid.
There will be unintended consequences, though. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are jobs for 20,000 PhD astronomers. Given the likely attrition rate from new college entrants majoring in astronomy and desiring a loan to pursue that major to those who actually complete a PhD, would loans offered to new college entrants be any more than a pittance, if anything at all? The approach taken in Australia could dry up the feed for desired but difficult to achieve degree programs.
I take issue with your “lifestyle” choice of using astronomers as an example. Astronomers serve a useful purpose. Try it again with gender studies PhDs.
Hey, gender studies PhDs serve a useful purpose, too!
Or is that “serve cappuccinos”. I always get that confused.
Recipe for a “Useful Purpose”:
-4oz scotch
-A generous dash of bitters
-Serve chilled to the temperature of cold reality
Rule of thumb:
Any degree that end in the word “Studies” is worthless and any degree where the only thing you’re qualified to do after receiving it, is to teach other to obtain that degree is also worthless.
Synopsis of Aaron Clarey’s book, Worthless
Entitlement, it’s not just for children any more:
“I am 52, a high school dropout, in pretty good health, unemployed and with no discernible prospects. I do not expect any pity, but it does happen to be a fact that my I.Q. is 134 and that it is strange that the advanced U.S.A. never managed to translate that intelligence into anything of use for itself.”
-“The Crisis of Men in America.” In Yesterday’s NYT.
Now the nation is expected to translate our intelligence in something of use, our love of literature into creative industries, our inactivity into solutions, etc. There is an argument the government should support those desirable things the market doesn’t support. But, as you imply, an advocate should have some proof the method supported actually produces those things.
I read that as well. But the last narrative was the one that caught my attention. But then, these were selective narratives. It’s a big country, and you can find someone to say essentially anything if you look for it.
That was a very informative article. Who knew that it was difficult for a prisoner to find remunerative work?
We get closer to Douglas Adam’s world every day:
The story was that they would build three Ark ships. Into the A ship would go all the leaders, scientists and other high achievers. The C ship would contain all the people who made things and did things, and the B ark would hold everyone else, such as hairdressers and telephone sanitisers. They sent the B ship off first, but of course the other two-thirds of the population stayed on the planet and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
No one wants a society of refrigerator repairmen? I don’t know some of those guys can be subversively creative, just ask Harry Tuttle. (Yeah, yeah, not a refrigerator repairman, but AC, but still)
Diversity. Carps too.
The sudden realisation that the upcoming generation finds your trophy laden work to be marginally entertaining causes a sudden reach for a way to dismiss their opinion as inaccurate.