> Or could the view that a beautiful building can inspire students have been factored in?
This is a bizzare take. Ornamentation and extraneous detail cost money. They take more time and need more maintenance which in turn cost more money. Money that could instead be spent money building more schools and paying teachers more.
I get the logic but irl that sounds like a false equivalency to me,
We don’t spend money on ornamentation/whimsy *and* we also don’t spend money on more schools, etc. we simply spend less and get less - but this approach is more palatable in most large organizations/modern-societies with weak leadership/vison.
(Kind of like the old adage that nobody got fired for buying IBM)
