Opinion & Commentary
A degree of uncertainty
We often hear about a crisis in our universities, but the crisis is older and deeper in Arts faculties than elsewhere.
For graduates of most disciplines, the frustrations of university life end soon after their last exams. The overcrowded lectures and tutorials, inadequate libraries, and difficult to find academics become fading memories as they move into careers and enjoy an increasing income.
For many Arts graduates those last exams and essays will be easy compared to the task that lies in front of them of finding a job.
In a typical year, more than 30% of Arts graduates will still be looking for full-time work four months after completing their degrees, with more than a third of those having no work at all.
This is a problem that began way back in the 1970s. Graduate employment rates started declining in the mid-1970s, and by 1977 Arts graduates were doing significantly worse than graduates as a whole, with more than 20% looking for full-time work four months after completion.
Things took a further significant turn for the worse in the early 1990s recession, dipping down to fewer than 60% gaining full-time work, before stabilising at current levels.
I do not believe that it is necessary for things to be like this.
In the United States, for example, humanities and social sciences graduates are, one year after completion, only about 10% more likely to be unemployed than their university peers with other degrees.
'We can change the university funding system so that people are more likely to do the degrees they want'
In Australia, by contrast, the long-term data suggests that Arts graduates are about 50% more likely to be unemployed than graduates generally.
There are two major things we can do to avoid having so much graduate unemployment.
First, we can change the university funding system so that people are more likely to do the degrees they want, rather than just doing Arts as a last resort or on its own without a vocational degree.
At the moment this does not happen because there is not enough money to finance strong growth in expensive-to-provide fields of study such as engineering, health and computer science, even though graduates from these areas do well in the labour market.
The signs of this problem can be seen in the enrolment patterns of the last decade. In this time the number of annual commencing places in the low-employment and low-cost humanities and social sciences increased by 24,000, while the number of annual commencing places in the high-employment and high-cost engineering and health fields increasing by a combined total of only 16,000.
If the universities were given the power to charge top-up fees, with government loans if necessary, they would have an incentive to focus student growth in areas with good prospects.
Arts would still have a central role in the universities, but more and more it should be combined with other, more vocational, areas of study, rather than as a stand-alone degree.
If a majority of Arts students had other degrees, this would make it a lot easier for those who had specialised in Arts to get the jobs that are suited to their skills
The second thing we can do to reduce graduate unemployment is end the current system of guaranteeing each public university a set number of student places.
Knowing that they can fill all their spots has allowed public universities the luxury of indifference to performance, and discriminates against entrepreneurial newcomers to higher education.
Arts students are often not systematically taught the thinking and writing skills that Arts faculties claim are characteristic of their graduates. Typically, students are expected to learn these skills indirectly, through observing others, researching and writing essays, and feedback on their work.
'Every time the word "fees" is mentioned there is the predictable chorus of opposition'
While many students do this successfully, the lack of formal teaching and testing makes it impossible for employers to assume that Arts graduates have high quality thinking and writing skills. Disturbingly, a recently released survey of employers found they thought the literacy skills of their Arts graduate employees to be below average.
A good example of innovative practice can be seen at Bond University, whose students are outside the public system and receive neither government subsidies nor loan assistance.
Every student at Bond must complete a core curriculum, including units in communication, information technology, values, and organisations. For Bond’s Arts students, this means they learn skills that almost every employer is likely to find valuable.
These two reforms, top-up fees and extended student choice, could between them give Arts students realistic hopes of getting jobs.
Of course every time the word ‘fees’ is mentioned there is the predictable chorus of opposition. Fees are unfair, inequitable, and so on.
But how fair is it to raise the hopes of Arts students that there is a good job at the end of their studies, when decades of experience shows that for many there is not? A few thousand dollars extra in fees is a bargain compared to the costs of unemployment and low-paying jobs.
For years Australia has had a perverse policy of not allowing students to invest in their main asset, themselves. Until this prohibition goes, Australia’s claim to be ready for the knowledge society and economy will be a bad joke.
About the Author:
Andrew Norton is a Research Fellow and Director of the Liberalising Learning research programme at The Centre for Independent Studies. He served as a higher education adviser to the Federal Minister for Education, Dr David Kemp, from 1997-99.
