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 (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), 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 (see one critique here).
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 work, with the automation of routine and repetitive tasks.
Universities and their educators have been attentive to these concerns for years, with arts, humanities, social science and communication degrees all now involving forms of work-integrated learning, industry experiences such as internships, as well as placing emphasis on ‘authentic’ assessments and graduate outcomes.
Taking the definition at face value, the belief that most HASS graduates are not ‘job-ready’ is an insult to all of the workers across Australia whose HASS qualifications secured their employment, including many of the politicians responsible for passing this legislation. A national government-funded Graduate Outcomes Survey QILT report (2020) found that the employment prospects of HASS graduates are virtually indistinguishable from those of their STEM counterparts.
Despite the Federal budget injection of research funding and the claims made about increasing student places, the Tehan reforms ultimately present us with a collective, sector-wide challenge to our national aspirations around access and equity in education. The shift in debt burden risks deterring first-in-family and low-SES students, and it has a particular impact on women’s future careers and financial positions, given the traditional student demographics for HASS degrees.
Our colleagues in STEM fields have shown us support; they are facing a significant reduction in student revenue as a result of these reforms. We need to work together to champion and celebrate the benefits and outcomes of our degrees and research in a comprehensive, interdisciplinary environment to find solutions for our global community.
We are all committed to preparing students for employment in an unpredictable world defined by a new set of power relations, with enormous environmental and social challenges.
In our twenty-first century, if 'the future of work is human’, surely we need an accessible, broad education, inclusive of training that creates new possibilities.
Professor Catharine Coleborne is president of DASSH (Australasian Council of the Deans of Arts, Social Science and Humanities, including creative fields). She is currently the head of School of Humanities and Social Science/dean of arts at the University of Newcastle.