You probably already do. If you are American, you probably paid much more taxes to pursue a worthless invasion into Iraq and Afghanistan. If you live in a capitalist country, you are probably paying taxes to pursue worthless bailouts of corporations, or whatever infrastructure these corporations want the state to pay for them.
It is also a bit unfortunate that you view education that doesn’t lead directly to a career to be “worthless”. You learn a lot of skills when you get university education, including but not limited to knowledge about the field at hand. If you get education in one field and then go into industry in another area, you will take those skills with you, and the industry at whole will benefit from having a wider skillset among its workers.
Your counterpoint is made up. I’m not aware of any universities—neither free nor paid for—which offer a degree in underwater basket weaving. I assume you are creating a scarecrow to make your argument against free education more convincing. I’m not gonna grant you this, and instead—in the spirit of HN—assume you meant normal basket weaving, and respond to the strongest plausible interpretation .
For sure there are crafts programs and vocational schools which teach basket weaving, surely you must see the value in maintaining the craft of basket weaving and for there to be skilled basket weavers out there weaving quality baskets, and those interested getting into the industry of weaved basket, there should be an available avenue to learn this skill.
