university funding / how do your universities work

[Ben]

and ben i guess you could say its "harder" to have a career in engineering but it isnt really an easy/hard dichotomy that only applies to arts and stem. certain stem fields are WAY harder than others. is it the same level of difficulty to do astrophysics than it is to do like... computer science? throw them into a differential equations class and let me know.

i meant, sustaining yourself (having a career, a job, whatever) on engineering skills you learned yourself at home is much harder than doing so with art. if you put your materials science self-education against someone with a degree, i dont think you will 1) be as qualified 2) be chosen for the job over them. maybe there are exceptions but...

with art, its totally different. there are plenty of filmmakers that do great, beautiful work without having been to film school. or artists that just work, and learn, practically rather than in school. the divide is not so clear. you might be correct that this difference exists within STEM as well (in that computer science might be easier to learn on your own and be competent at than astrophysics yes) but theyre both very hard in comparison to the arts. there is a spectrum of difficulty and the separation between STEM and the arts in this case is very, very wide. not a dichotomy, but far enough apart that they can be treated differently