policy & reform campusreview . com . au
It is obvious that HASS and STEM must work together to solve global problems .
Arts vs Science ?
The Job-Ready Graduates package and beyond .
By Catharine Coleborne and Diana Newport-Peace
The higher education sector in Australia has been through a rapid cycle of change and disruption over the past two years , starting with a shift in the way university places are funded .
Broadly speaking , the reforms favour programs in STEM ( science , technology , engineering and mathematics ) and health , at the expense of those in HASS ( humanities , arts and social sciences ). This is because student demand for STEM and Health degrees is persistently lower than the government believes is necessary to address national skills shortages .
Figures released in October confirm that every year for over a decade , university applications to study ‘ society and culture ’ degrees such as the Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Social Science have accounted for 23 per cent of all undergraduate applications .
Applications to study creative arts ( which are counted separately by DESE ) accounted for 6.7 per cent of all applications in 2021 , which represents a gradual decline since 2010 . Yet this remains more than double the number of those applying to study degrees coded as ‘ information technology ’.
Together , society and culture and creative arts account for more applications than the entire field of health . Student interest in society , culture and the arts continues to outpace the natural and physical sciences at a rate of more than three applications to one .
Regardless of the funding reforms , the enduring appetite for HASS appears so strong that it remains , paradoxically , STEM which needs promoting and supporting to students .
While the sustained popularity of HASS subjects and degrees is positive , there is a fundamental problem with the way higher education is carved up into discipline groupings for funding and reporting purposes . We suggest that the positioning tends to polarise our community , rather than fostering collaboration in support of knowledge creation for future employment outcomes .
It is obvious that HASS and STEM must work together to solve global problems . And yet the evident hard boundary between STEM and HASS increasingly constrains teaching and research inside universities as institutions . Leaders of future-focused degree programs often struggle to secure approval for programs which straddle disciplines and funding models . Researchers , under pressure to tackle ‘ real world ’ problems in partnership with industry , are frustrated by the Australian Research Council ’ s funding outcomes which tend to favour clear disciplinary research , despite existing ARC definitions of interdisciplinary scholarship .
Graduate outcomes for the humanities , creative arts and social sciences consistently demonstrate that the skills prioritised by these disciplines are valued by employers in the workplace . Critical thinking , global awareness , collaboration and ethical practice are fundamental to generating and applying new knowledge in any field .
These academic disciplines have also evolved to embrace scientific and technological change , readily adopting digital practices and methods , as well as stretching knowledge boundaries in exciting ways . The most cursory scan of
university offerings demonstrates that human-centred education is increasingly working hand in hand with science and technology .
Nationwide , strong student demand in digital media and an explosion of provision in virtual production and visual special effects is backed up by ARC investment in larger research programs , including multiple projects at the intersection of the humanities and computer science .
Examples include the multi-institutional LIEF grant hosted at the University of Newcastle to create a Time-Layered Cultural Map which applies digital humanities techniques of computational analysis to human stories . The RMITled Centre of Excellence in Automated Decision Making and Society combines social and technological disciplines in an international industry , research and civil society network .
Far from being in crisis , then , HASS is booming in the tech-rich world . But more work is needed in the policy and funding domain to remove the shackles from interdisciplinary teaching and research .
Rather than seeking to attract students away from the humanities , arts and social sciences by pricing some subjects out of the market , policy makers seeking to involve young people in science and technology would do well to highlight the opportunities which are flourishing in the interdisciplinary spaces where new degrees are being formed .
A narrative that pits STEM and HASS against one another is no longer useful or even relevant . If interpreted carefully , the Job-Ready Graduates package could empower universities to offer more multidisciplinary degree programs at the cutting edge of global education , transforming future generations of students into wicked problem solvers . ■
Catharine Coleborne is President of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts , Social Science and Humanities . Diana Newport-Peace is a consultant at Outside Opinion .
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