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Students protest against Education Minister Dan Tehan at the National Press Club in Canberra . Photo : Mick Tsikas / AAP
Human cost
HASS experts ‘ deeply disappointed ’ with the higher education reforms .
By Catharine Coleborne
In 2020 , COVID-19 has revealed that
some forms of work , such as health , aged care and social assistance as well as food and service provision , are essential . Higher education is among the services that have remained accessible throughout the crisis , and that now rely on new forms of communication and sociality .
Our peak body , the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts and Social Sciences ( DASSH ) also released a report titled ‘ Humanities , Arts and Social Science Degrees : Powering Workforce Transformation Through Creativity , Critical Thinking and Human Interaction ’ ( 2018 ). This report found that the Humanities and Social Science ( HASS ) disciplines supply two thirds of Australia ’ s workforce , and that graduates of HASS degrees are highly prized and increasingly sought-after by employers .
Yet the report also found that HASS disciplines have been undervalued : a problem intensified by the government ’ s higher education reforms known as the ‘ Job-Ready Graduates ’, embodied in the Bill which passed through the senate on 8 October 2020 .
Last year , Deloitte Economics produced a report on ‘ The Path to Prosperity : Why the Future of Work is Human ’. It points to future anticipated critical skills gaps , including written and verbal communication , analysis , innovative thinking , problem solving and digital literacy .
These are all skills that are embedded in humanities , arts , social science and communication degrees . Other critical skills gaps sit at the intersection of Arts and STEM fields , including design , architecture , business , social science and finance ( p . 20 ).
HASS graduates with these skills are also trained to have insight into the way society is both formed and fragmented during periods of social and political upheaval and crisis . They are ideally placed to help us recover as we respond to the pandemic .
Widespread bitter opposition to Tehan ’ s university funding reforms – expressed by many people , including those in STEM fields – ultimately failed to challenge the path of the legislation , although it will be reviewed by 2022 .
HASS experts are deeply disappointed . We are concerned that these reforms will discourage future students from undertaking courses in HASS disciplines because of the increased student contributions for most courses by 113 per cent , effectively placing the burden of debt onto graduates .
This debt will be unevenly felt , with equity groups in our society most at risk .
When the Tehan reforms were first announced in June this year , I spoke publicly about the way a dangerous message was being sent about HASS degrees , one that underscores their perceived low value as framed by negative expectations about employment outcomes .
‘ Job readiness ’ itself is defined in a very limited way . How we define what will be needed in future is constantly shifting , as others argue , including graduates with multidisciplinary backgrounds .
Subsequent analysis of the fee changes exposed inconsistency in the framing of different fields of study , with a loss of university revenue for students in many areas , including STEM fields .
Yet at its core , the JRG package very clearly positions the humanities and social science disciplines as ‘ luxury items ’ in the array of educational programs on offer inside a narrative about national higher education and training for the ‘ social good ’ and the future of the economy .
Experts and leaders in HASS fields continue to puzzle over why it is that despite the mounting evidence that the graduates of these disciplines are critical to Australia ’ s economic recovery , there is a distinctive blind spot in Australian social and political life about their relevance .
If HASS graduates are among the most sought after by employers for their highly refined critical thinking and communication skills , as well as their independence of thought and cultural competencies , why are they so invisible ? Why has the label ‘ soft skills ’ been given to the rich set of outcomes created through the humanities ?
One of the central tenets of the bundle of reforms is that degrees need to create employability outcomes using this blunt definition . We talk constantly of the future of work as shifting towards highly skilled
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