My reading of the OP was, "Society shouldn't fund useless art degrees". I was arguing against the "society shouldn't fund" part, because IMO art and other careers have social value beyond the ROI of income vs tuition. By the same token, teachers are generally extremely underpaid, and could use help with student loans as well (they get it in some localities, to various degrees). In fact I think all higher education should be paid for by taxpayers rather than students -- which you are free to disagree with.

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.