Why students are abandoning arts degrees
Australians starting university aren’t buying what humanities academics are selling, and it’s not just to do with how much they cost.
Our Team
Latest
Why are Australians shunning studying languages?
Community pressure is keeping geographically irrelevant languagues on life-support.
Message to unis on R&D review: just what is in it for taxpayers?
At the core of university culture is a 1000-year tradition of pursuing knowledge for its own sake and if the community benefits – well that’s a bit of luck.
Why VCs are failing to make the (pay) grade
There are utterly hopeless vice-chancellors paid at grades way above their ability.
Coalition wants quota cake and to eat it, too
There are dangers for both Labor and the Coalition on this high risk political strategy, but this is a problem of universities’ own amking. The elite Group of Eight campaigned so hard against quotas they gave the government no room for concessions.
Unis must explain humanities’ worth
The brutal truth is taxpayers will want a better case for stumping up more cash for degrees that do not qualify anybody for anything specific, other than being an academic.
Why academics hate uni ranking season
They create markets too much like capitalism for those in academia who believe the role of government is to write the cheque and then leave universities alone – or ask hard questions about the quality and value for money of the courses they teach.
Why should an arts degree cost more than medicine?
An arts degree will cost students just under $17,000 a year, which makes medicine and dentistry a bargain at $13,000. There are ways to address this, just not politically easy ones.
Uni debacle was always going to get ugly
Our two oldest universities are both loudly left-wing campuses – they have activist staff and student groups where the party-line is settler-colonist theory – in which Israel as is has no right to exist.
The many pitfalls of exporting education
The Victorian government will kick $5m to local universities to set up overseas and avoid Canberra’s international student quotas. Now why hasn’t anybody tried that before? They have and it doesn’t do much.
- 1
- 2
Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/stephen-matchett/page/2