The value of the Arts cannot be discounted

By Imran Ahmed, March 26 2026—

Editorial: In the defence of arts

I recently had a conversation with a couple friends in the engineering school. Although it started off as a casual conversation about coursework and relative “difficulty,” it quickly switched to a familiar topic: which degrees are “useful”, and which ones are not. 

Discourse around the value of education often follows the same hierarchical structure. The degrees that can make you the most money must be the most valuable, because the job market has decided so. 

This sentiment does not come from nowhere. While simultaneously cutting funding for advanced education, the provincial government has created a framework for evaluating “in-demand skills”, using data such as post-graduation employment rates and information on the labor market. Naturally, these metrics often favor STEM and other technical degrees over those in the arts.

The University of Calgary, as a result of these funding shortages, has begun the process of closing and consolidating programs in the Faculty of Arts. So far, the department of classics and religion is expected to close by July 1 of this year. 

There is some truth to the logic behind these decisions. Labor markets send signals about what is needed in the workforce, and universities can not ignore economic realities. But it is high time that the intrinsic value of education be divorced from short-term employment outcomes. 

It is impossible to capture the value of arts using labor market statistics. In fact, attempting to quantify the value of any degree using earning potential or other adjacent statistics is ignoring the purpose of education in its entirety.

The core of our humanity lies in our creativity, not modern productivity measures. The arts allow societies to reflect on themselves, through literature, philosophy, history, psychology and cultural studies. They teach us how to ask questions about meaning, ethics and identity; how we can challenge assumptions and develop novel ways to perceive the world around us. These are questions that cannot be answered through cold calculations. 

Yet the way we increasingly talk about education reduces all of this to a monetary cost-benefit analysis, where we choose our degree based on our expected return on investment. 

This is not to deny the economic pressures students face. Tuition is expensive, the labour market is extremely competitive and many students understandably view their degrees as a financial investment that necessitates a return.

But prospective students who follow this “common knowledge,” or parents who pressure their children into choosing degrees based solely on earning potential, may be making a mistake in their own right. We saw this in the rapid rise of computer science majors during the tech boom earlier this decade, where corporate demand promised endless opportunity. Only a few years later, artificial intelligence and shifting industry demands have resulted in waves of layoffs and extreme labour market saturation. 

No one can predict exactly where the labour market will be in the future. Though the economic realities are real and undeniable, it is entirely possible that both STEM and arts graduates will struggle to find employment in the future. 

This leads us to the deeper question about the purpose of education itself. If universities only exist to produce workers, then perhaps arts do fall short. But if education is meant to cultivate curiosity and creativity, then the value of an education in the arts is much harder to measure. 

If this is indeed the case, perhaps the better question is not which degree promises the highest salary, but which fields allow students to pursue what they are truly passionate about.