Should the federal government increase the fees of humanities courses at university?
Last year, the federal government introduced changes to the fee structures of most Australian universities, making it cheaper to study courses such as sciences, engineering, teaching and other courses deemed “job ready” and making it much more expensive to study languages, literature, history and social sciences (known as the humanities). The minister for education, Dan Tehan has said that these changes are “common sense. If Australia needs more educators, more health professionals and engineers, then we should incentivise students to pursue those careers.”
However, critics of the plan have argued that graduates of science courses have “the same poor employment outcomes” as those in humanities courses. Others have pointed out that humanities courses teach critical thinking, which is extremely important in many careers and jobs. Given that most newspaper journalists are graduates of humanities degrees, much of the commentary in widespread newspapers has been critical of these changes: online, many people who are not professional writers have written very short comments in response to these journalists arguing that science courses also teach critical thinking skills.
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