By the way, most of the greatest artists throughout history never attended college at all.
However, if you're arguing that art degrees don't produce good artists, that's a separate argument altogether. It's a valid consideration, I think. But that's less of a question of "who should pay for education" and more "what is the value of education". I don't know enough about MFAs to comment on that, but I do know that there are many, many majors that don't produce high-income careers. I don't think that should be their goal or metric, personally. Maybe that's valid for trade schools, but society shouldn't only have tradespeople learning industry skills and nothing else.
That's the underlying concern... it's not a strawman, it's the whole point: that morally or economically, we shouldn't be evaluating human productivity on dollars alone.
Most college kids going into school have no idea what they're going to be doing in the future. There aren't really standard systems in place to help guide them. Even a basic lifetime ROI analysis by major isn't something you encounter organically through the school system, and whether you're lucky enough to have done that sort of evaluation before choosing a path just totally depends on the circumstances of your upbringing or internet browsing.
Our higher-ed system was inherited from Old World elites, and there's probably a case to be made that it's not as relevant to the modern workforce or society anymore, but that's not a very fair thing to pin on any individual degree or student.
Morally, if we've decided that the humanities have any intrinsic worth at all, it stands to reason that we should be feeding the people who practice the humanities. And unless we want them all to be slave-artists, maybe even pay them a livable wage. Maybe the moral failing here is our lack of funding for the arts, or our lack of appropriate valuation at least. Especially in a create-one, share-unlimited-times digital economy of production.
Economically, what societal value is there in an indentured class of artists not making art? Does society really get more value out of painters flipping burgers while their loan sharks muck around in spreadsheets making more money?
Personally... as a tax-paying dev, I would be happy to pay a little more tax if it means people who chose a different path in life got to eat, sleep under a solid roof, and create beautiful things. I don't want to live in a ruthless, hypercapitalist society where human worth is reduced to dollars and bankers determine our destinies.