Long Live the (Australian) Arts Degree!
★ by Eve Watt ★
edited by Sarah Kadous / graphic by Coco Lashar
Every time someone asked me what I wanted to do after high school, I would slide a little further into my seat as I sighed, “I’ll probably get an Arts degree.” As the words left my mouth, I imagined the image of a boomer’s worst nightmare that would subsequently appear: an almond latte-drinking, overindulgent, debt-ridden, and — of course — gluten-avoiding student who spent four years studying under a philosophy major. But I would always back up my life path with two main points of reasoning:
Tertiary education should not be based solely on a future career and succeeding within the capitalist system. Rather, universities should be seen as places in which a student can experience a fulfilling higher education for the sole purpose of wanting such.
In Australia, university fees are somewhat reasonably priced, and I would be able to get my aforementioned further education without it costing me the entirety of my future earnings.
Yet my shame for wanting to get an arts degree became insurmountable following the Australian government’s announcement on June 19 that university fees would be doubled for future Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) students and would also be raised for commerce and law.
The initiative seeks to fund an expansion of 39,000 university places by 2023 and cheaper degrees for those choosing to study courses in high-demand, such as teaching, nursing, maths, science, and engineering. The move aims to promote enrolment in subjects seen to potentially facilitate economic recovery following the havoc wrought by COVID-19, with universities expected to lose up to $16 billion by 2023. This is largely due to the reliance of Australian universities on full-fee paying international students, who contributed $37.6 billion to the Australian economy in 2019 and contributed an average of 26 percent of universities' operating revenue in 2018. The government has blatantly espoused the initiative as a deterrent for would-be university students from studying arts-based subjects.
When announcing the decision, Education Minister Dan Tehan did not shy away from admitting that the government was “trying to send a price signal,” to encourage students to rethink their selected courses before attending university. This “price signal” comes not only in the form of increased fee rates, but a shift to most of the economic burden from taxpayers to the student, mirroring the US system. According to Dr. Barnes of the National Tertiary Education Union, “Dan Tehan is asking a small group of students to bail out higher education more broadly.”
“In shifting the economic burden from the government to the individual student, not only are HASS students reprimanded, but STEM students are left with proportionately fewer resources than the students before them.”
Under the proposed plan, law and commerce students will see an increase of 28 percent in student contributions, while student contributions in the humanities will increase by 113 percent. For a three-year humanities degree, the student contribution would jump from up to $20,400 to $43,500. For law and commerce degrees, this contribution could increase from $34,000 to $43,500. According to ANU Professor in higher education policy, Andrew Norton, "Under this [new] system, humanities students may spend their entire careers repaying debt, whereas for a nursing student it may take just a few years — there are very big discrepancies." In shifting the economic burden from the government to the individual student, not only are HASS students reprimanded, but STEM students are left with proportionately fewer resources than the students before them.
Minister Tehan, despite having acquired an arts degree himself, alleged that the government is trying to “[encourage] students to go in those areas where we know the skills will be.” Referring to STEM courses as “job-relevant,” the plan views universities as factories in which “job-ready” citizens are manufactured, rather than institutions of education. Such a stance undermines the significance of arts within our society as a whole. Ironically, humanities students are employed at a rate of 91.1 percent, while science and maths graduates have a 90.1 percent rate of overall employment. Furthermore, humanities and social science graduates on average earn AU$70,300, more than maths, science maths, and science graduates, who earn AU$68,900.
Standing alone, many may see this plan as simply an appropriate safeguard against increased unemployment rates. However, when viewed in conjunction with the government’s other actions within the realm of the arts, an insidious agenda becomes clear. In December 2019, the Australian Federal Government merged the arts portfolio with numerous others. What was once the Department of Communications and the Arts became the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, and Communications, effectively abolishing any explicitly arts-focused department. This decision sparked public outcry, with ABC broadcaster Virginia Trioli tweeting, "Arts ceases to exist. Name, portfolio, federal govt focus — gone."
Things may have been looking up when the government pledged a $250 million support package for Australia’s arts and cultural sectors on June 25. The package — $90 million of which comes in the form of government-backed concessional loans — attempts to create more jobs within the cultural industry in the wake of COVID-19. Peeling away the layer of ostensible support for the arts, one can see clearly that this move allows further reach into the arts sector by the Liberal Party (for non-Aussie readers, the Liberal Party is Australia’s major conservative center-right political party). To implement the grants and loans, the government will set up a “Creative Economy Taskforce,” rather than make it the work of the independent Australia Council for the Arts. As a panelist on Australian television program Q+A, musician and Artistic Director Katie Noonan stated that she is concerned about the decision-making process being “politicized” rather than the role of distributing these funds being allocated to the “truly independent think tank” of the Australia Council.
“This tells us that the raising of university fees is a strategic move in influencing the critical thinking of an entire generation, rather than a sensible step in the direction of financial recovery.”
Alongside the potential politicization of the stimulus package, currently, only 25,000 artists and arts workers are supported by the Australian JobKeeper system, leaving 575,000 people working within the arts out of the JobKeeper package. On April 8, 2020, the Federal Parliament passed the $130 billion JobKeeper legislation which provides employees from registered organizations and businesses with $1,500 per fortnight for a period of six months. Crucial amendments to JobKeeper brought forth by the Australian Labor Party and the Greens, which would support many in the arts industry, were turned down. Shadow Minister for the Arts Tony Burke condemned the vote down of the amendments to JobKeeper, stating, “The Morrison Government clearly does not understand the scale of the crisis facing Australia’s arts and entertainment sector.”
To many, however, the point still stands; the Liberal Party should be commended for this stimulus package. While it has been referred to as a “drop in the ocean” of what is needed to revitalize the arts sector, many have still welcomed the package. Or they did, before the government announced on June 30 that they would spend $270 billion in defense over the next 10 years. The newly announced defense strategy focuses on preparation for a possible conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific region, with the Australian Defence Force acquiring long-range anti-shipping missiles. This investment effectively quells any arguments in favor of the increase in university fees and the futile stimulus package — $270 billion put towards defense says that the Australian Government has enough money, but would rather spend it on national security than assisting its own citizens. To put it into perspective, $250 million (the total amount of the stimulus package) is smaller than one one-thousandth of the defense initiative. Further, if the government could chip $16 billion off of the defense budget, the loss of universities over the coming years would be eliminated, and students would not have to pay more for their degrees. This tells us that the raising of university fees is a strategic move in influencing the critical thinking of an entire generation, rather than a sensible step in the direction of financial recovery.
On a social basis, the importance of the arts cannot be overstated. If we take the pandemic as a microcosm for our collective experience in this world as a whole, it is evident that the arts are integral to our survival. In many ways, new-age enlightenment has seemingly taken place on a minuscule scale in light of the Black Lives Matter protests. Resources that have long-existed have been disseminated to fulfill our collective yearning to learn about this world’s history and the path to societal change. This is yet another indication of our dependence on the arts.
“In a world where knowledge is power, this plan serves to take away that power from an entire generation of learners.”
The scheme devalues the humanities and punishes students who wish to think critically. It is purely a form of social control through economic incentives and begs the questions: are students who gain a more thorough understanding of the systems and structures existing within this country and their impact on society more prone to questioning the actions of the government? Does the government just want to churn out pawns of neoliberalism in their game of achieving economic prosperity? In a world where knowledge is power, this plan serves to take away that power from an entire generation of learners.
Furthermore, this will create intergenerational inequality within the arts sector. Those who can afford arts degrees will likely go ahead with paying double for their education, while many who cannot afford this extra cost will be — as the government would prefer — dissuaded from the arts. Consequently, much of the art world will be made up of those in places of privilege, thereby removing the diversity that enriches every aspect of the arts.
Those of us planning to put a HASS course at the top of our university preference list (due in August) are left stranded, with many of us having chosen to drop maths, a prerequisite for most STEM courses, three years ago when we shifted into senior school. The Class of 2020 will undoubtedly go down in history, for all the wrong reasons, and we were rightfully anticipating at least a tiny bit of leeway from the government in terms of university placements. We were, however, far from the expectation that our university fees would be doubled and we would be left with a crushing debt burden on us for the rest of our lives, which we will have to start paying off when we begin earning more than $46,600.
It is safe to say that this year’s senior students have faced our fair share of challenges, yet we are also a markedly impassioned generation and are not afraid to fight for what we believe in. We cannot allow the Liberal Party to limit our access to education for the sole purpose of influencing what it is we learn. We cannot be ashamed of wanting to learn; the government should be ashamed for not allowing us to.