The government’s contentious job-ready graduate reforms are likely to disadvantage Indigenous students, a Wiradjuri man said last week.
According to recent data, social science degrees (which are considered humanities courses and will attract the fee hikes of 113 per cent per year) are the most popular disciplines for Indigenous Australian students. This fact sits incongruously with experts, with one of the Closing the Gap targets being to raise Indigenous youth enrolment in higher education to 70 per cent by 2031.
Lachlan McDaniel told the ABC that his arts degree was "probably the best thing that ever happened" to him, and he fears the reforms in the package will discourage and disadvantage Indigenous Australians wanting to attain a tertiary qualification.
"I think that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students largely come to university to gain greater skills to serve their communities, and an attack on arts degrees that include things like Indigenous Studies will hurt us," McDaniel said.
National data shows that 33 per cent of Indigenous students chose to enrol in social science degrees compared to 19 per cent of the general student cohort.
“Experts are concerned the changes will disproportionately disadvantage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, by lumping them with more debt or deterring them from study altogether – scenarios which both stand to jeopardise national higher education targets agreed to just months ago,” the ABC said.
In addition to a humanities degree increasing by 113 per cent, law or commerce degrees have also been target under the reforms, each increasing by 28 per cent.
After gaining entry via a direct entry Indigenous program, McDaniel began a joint arts-law degree in 2005.
"Before I went to Macquarie University, my job was to work in a factory and I was pushing the hot and cold buttons into taps," he said.
"I realised what the value of an education was and that my passion was for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. And then I wanted to get a degree that would make me of service to our communities."
The employability of humanities graduates is often questioned – despite dubious evidence and the need for so-called “soft skills” in Australia’s economic future. The irony of the reforms is also worth mentioning, considering the architect of the reforms, Tehan, studied a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) at the University of Melbourne at the beginning of his career.
But for McDaniel, his university degree was not solely based on job prospects. It was about family, too.
"I went from a low-skilled job to being able to work in the not-for-profit sector, the private sector, I worked in tertiary education. None of that would have been possible without my humanities studies, my arts degree and my law degree,” he said.
"My dad was amongst the first cohort of direct entry students for the University of Western Sydney, he was a security guard, had just left the army as a soldier and didn't have many employment prospects, before he studied."
Director of the University of Sydney's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research Department, Ngarigu woman Professor Jaky Troy, said the job-ready reforms undermined the 2031 Closing the Gap targets.
"This strategy of increasing fees and making it more difficult for Indigenous students to go to university is very much a contradiction to the Government's desire to see more Indigenous students better educated; it's a major deterrent and people will think twice," Troy said.
She said the reforms would make it difficult to keep Indigenous students positive about commencing university and that fees should be lowered, not increased.
However, despite widespread criticism of fee hikes for some courses, Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt is hopeful the package will encourage Indigenous students to study courses in teaching and nursing, which attract far cheaper course costs and where job shortages exist.
"What is it that we need within our communities, which gives us the strength to advance all of the targets around the gaps now in health? Doctors and nurses, allied health staff," he said.
"We have shortages across a number of industries in Australia and it would be great for Indigenous students to think of those options and opportunities because they will continue to evolve and grow in demand."
McDaniel currently mentors Indigenous students and he, like other experts and commentators, remains unconvinced that students will enrol in cheaper courses in which they hold no interest.
"It disturbs me that the next generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are having another hurdle put in front of them to access tertiary education and get the education that they want," he said.