There is no free lunch in this world. That’s what we believed. 

2014, the famous private university Cooper Union ended the history of providing free education, which continued for more than one hundred and fifty years. Because of financial crisis, school decided to collect tuition fees from students, which results that the academy of arts was not able to provide scholarship for students any more. In America, where the tuition fees of private school are expensive, to finish an art bachelor degree without scholarship means that the total tuition fees of four years will reached 150,000 dollars, which not includes housing and living fees. That’s the fee standard of private academy of arts in America. 

Many people may doubt who will enroll in such an expensive course? But in fact, since 1960s, the graduates from the academy of arts in America have gradually increased. Financial crisis, the reduction of public funding and other issues have not decreased the number of students. The development of art market and the rise of cultural industry make people believe that artists will succeed in business. But the reality is that the business market tends to favour those artists who have been famous. Numerous young artists could only struggle at the bottom of the food chain and even had great debts because of paying tuition fees. 

The artists were virtually instilled a notion by the high fee standard that there is no free lunch in this world, including art. Today, people will say that being a poor artist is shameful, which I will not comment on. Because if one could not receive art education on account of poverty, it will at least be regretful. As to criticise the art degree with expensive tuition fee, in 2009, some artists graduated from the Cooper Union set up an art school which was proclaimed to be the freest art school in New York and named as Bruce High Quality Foundation University. They offer different courses in spring and fall semesters and invite artists, curators and art critics to lecture. Different from academy of arts, students don’t need to pay tuition fees. The school will not provide certificates and qualifications either. In fact, isn’t academy of arts a classroom with a few chairs where students and teachers sit together to talk about arts? 

From 2009, since the school was set up, it has been in a large scale with more than eight hundred students per semester. Then the school began to cooperate with the non-profit organisation in Africa to offer courses in local. It also set up residency programme in Miami. But in the same time, the founder decided to close the school. For them, this is a school and also an artistic experiment, which leads to another possibility of American art education. From the scale, it might be extremely successful. But it began to solidify. It began to follow the system, began to deviate from the purpose, which makes people lose imagination. 

Even though the close of school makes people regret, it could be a sharp warning for those art school and resource manager to rethink. Ironically, the university Cooper Union cultivates bold and risk-loving artists in those years began to charge tuition fees nowadays. It is said that charging tuition fees is for building an extremely expensive teaching building, but the university could not afford the debts. It is like putting the cart before the horse. 

Briefly looking back, I feel that previous year, joining the cultural and art activities in Macao is happy. To visit the exhibition in Ox Warehouse, to attend lecture in Pin-to Livros, to appreciate the Macao City Fringe performance on the street and so many activities that wouldn’t cost a lot are enough to make me get in touch with many interesting people and things in the art world. I realised that these are arts, merely without the word “market”. Unfortunately, because of different reasons, these spaces are closed or moved. I don’t know whether we accidentally lost the beautiful things that originally belong to us in the process of development.