According to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and its reporting after 2025, Donald J. Trump proposed eliminating federal agencies that support arts, humanities, and learning, as dozens of U.S. arts organizations had their government grants terminated. As we look through history and see the signs and patterns of a recession, we can use it to identify one as the economy fluctuates, whether that’d be through fashion or color palette (colorful to beige), or the endurance of art. Art usually functions as social commentary and a source of hope during hardship when it comes to an economic collapse. Additionally, there are troubling signs from the U.S. Education Department that mirrors a kind of regression, which also allows a potential chance for art to become more vital than ever. It’s important to acknowledge that education emphasizes reading, math, or other “core” subjects, rather than visual and performing arts classes. As a result, students already have limited exposure to art and other opportunities for creative development and self-expression. Therefore, this doesn’t just affect aspiring artists, but rather all students’ development involving empathy, imagination, and critical thinking. Thus, it does not surprise me that the rising question that artists have now is if artistic education is still worth it when higher education is becoming less accessible. In order to navigate this, I wanted to explore the perspective of looking “beyond the resume”—so not just the degree on paper, but rather the experience and journey that comes with it that makes art “worth it”.
What Happens to Art When Art School Becomes a Luxury?
Though education is not a privilege that everyone necessarily goes after, it should remain accessible to people who choose to benefit from it. Defunding that would make art become more marginalized culturally. When schools deprioritize art, society loses a solid baseline of visual literacy, cultural awareness, and creative thinking. The less diverse art and culture becomes, the more art is at risk of becoming elite, privatized, or commodified, making art less integrated in public life and more of a niche pursuit. With that being said, how can people know to follow an artistic path if they never encounter those fundamental courses in the first place? People may begin to believe that art is for only those who are “naturally talented” at it, a mentality that contradicts the very purpose of art, which is inherently communal practice. If society starts treating art as a luxury and not essential to a healthy democracy, we could see a decrease of public art, creative education, and artistic voices speaking to the challenges of our times. Overall, art becomes easier to defend when more people understand its role in personal growth, mental health, community cohesion, and social justice.
The Invisible Benefits of Art—and Why Art Education Still Matters
Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) have numerous benefits that are not talked about enough in a regular school curriculum. In VAPA classes, you have to think outside of the box and learn to adapt your skillset to something more creative. When students create something and share it with others, they learn to trust their voice, developing self-advocacy skills and lighting a spark of not only their creativity but also dedication and commitment to the craft. These skills are transferable to every academic discipline. Research consistently shows that students involved in the arts often outperform peers in reading comprehension, writing, and even math, because art approaches these problems in a multitude of angles. Unlike many academic subjects, art directly engages with human emotion. It gives students an outlet for stress, fear, anger, confusion, or joy, as well as opportunities of self-reflection for many students. Art could be the only place where they feel motivated, capable, and understood. Yet creative skills are also one of the most in-demand skills in the modern economy, not just art for art-purposes. Fields such as technology, design, marketing, engineering, architecture, medicine, and environmental science all require innovative thinking and these “soft” skills that many people undermine because it’s less talked about.
So … Is The Need For Creative Learning Higher Education Still Worth It?
All in all, the U.S. undergoing social and political stress increases the pressure on schools to “deliver basic skills” in that academic environment. Since arts don’t equally have the same weight as other subjects when it comes to translating into standardized test scores, it’s easy to perceive that art is not that valuable of a stature or that it’s not unattainable to learn unless you’re fully doing it to get a degree on your resume. But If we continue to measure art through narrow institutional metrics, the very qualities that define art are forgotten. Art can show how someone thinks, works, communicates, analyzes, and adapts in society, so it’s essential to fight for the experience to explore art in higher education beyond credentials.
