The unfortunate reality is that careers in arts are notoriously unpredictable, and can easily have next to zero returns on education investment even for people

The unfortunate reality is that careers in arts are notoriously unpredictable, and can easily have next to zero returns on education investment even for people who have good high school performance. At least for many creative types of carts, people can and do find stable employment in things like constructing stage sets, film editing, etc. But between 100 high school painters, actors, poets, and writers we realistically can't predict which ones will succeed. It's not that only wealthy kids can afford to dedicate themselves to art, it's that wealthy kids have better resources to endure the unpredictable nature of art industry. > Government funded universities would solve this, because they would set the price, but we'd probably lose out on a lot of great programs. You could also solve this by outlawing charging tuition and switch college funding to being a percent of the graduate's future income. Of course, this would get the colleges to optimize for only majors that have high incomes after graduation, and we'd lose all of our philosophers and writers and artists (which I personally think would be a bad thing). I disagree that this is a bad thing. We need to stop trying to convince ourselves that college is about turning out "well-rounded individuals". That mentality stems from the roughly 2 centuries when university's job was to socialize elite young men in upper class society. Contemporary university is about preparing individuals with skills that will be desirable in the job market. Charging tuition via income sharing will make colleges emphasize high income majors, which in turn benefits graduates who now have skills to work in high income jobs.