I’d like to add a couple of points.
In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call I discussed Max Borders’ paper. While I’m at least as avid a fan of the fine arts as anyone around, I can’t see how state operation of a school to train musicians, dancers, and so on has the slightest effect on the demand for fine arts performances and exhibitions. The cultural tastes of people aren’t affected by the presence or absence of schools to train performers. If UNCSA didn’t exist, there would still be precisely the same level of interest in ballet, chamber music, orchestral concerts here in Raleigh (or Charlotte or Asheville or anywhere else). The North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, for example, wouldn’t sell any fewer tickets if UNCSA didn’t exist or were privately run. (Nor would the orchestra be any better or worse.)
My point is that subsidizing the training of performers can’t pull the level of interest in the fine arts up by its bootstraps.
I’m not interested in stock car racing. If the state decided to subsidize a facility for the training of drivers and mechanics here in Raleigh that wouldn’t make me want to spend so much as one minute on racing. Same thing with other people and the fine arts.
Second, Max took some criticism from J. Peder Zane for, allegedly, singling out the fine arts for criticism. Advocating that the school be privatized is not, in my view, criticism of the school, much less of the fine arts. Nevertheless, Zane thought he had found a weak point in the paper by observing that Max did not call for the privatization of other kinds of professional training. Au contraire: the case for privatization of UNCSA is not weakened by not following the logic of that argument to every possible conclusion — but I don’t mind doing so.
The state does not need to subsidize the education of lawyers, doctors, engineers, auto mechanics, or anyone else. If we were to privatize UNCSA, that would help to create momentum for the privatization of other kinds of training where needlessly intervenes. When institutions have to pass the test of the market — that is, obtaining sufficient revenue from willing payers to cover their costs — they tend to operate more efficiently. And when students have to bear the cost of education and training without subsidy from government, they’re apt to make a wiser decision on the cost/benefit ratio of that education or training.
Privatization is a win for taxpayers, a win for efficiency, and a win for the objective of whittling government back to its proper functions. Let’s begin with UNCSA, then keep going.
