Officials at the UNC School of the Arts have declined to participate in the joint John Locke/Pope Center panel Thursday, Dec. 3, “Taxpayers and Arts Education.” As I stated earlier, the Pope Center will be releasing a paper, “The UNC School of the Arts: Should It Be Self-Supporting?” We asked school officials to join our panel (and we were even willing to move the date if it posed a problem). But they said no.
Luckily, we have John Hood and J. Peder Zane along with Max Borders to sort out how much taxpayer money should go toward professional training of performing artists (especially considering that about half the undergraduates come from other states and only a small percentage of all graduates remain in North Carolina).
