\n<\/p>\n
Tim Winton knows what it\u2019s like to be the first in a family to go to university \u2013 \u201cwhat a breakthrough that is, the kind of opportunities it provides\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was at the Western Australian Institute of Technology, studying arts, that he wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer, launching a four-decade writing career.<\/p>\n
This was the 1980s, when a Labor government temporarily made higher education free to all Australians.<\/p>\n
\u201cEarning a humanities degree was not only life changing, in terms of opening up a world of knowledge otherwise beyond my reach, it also turns out to have been enormously productive \u2013 for me and many, many people around me,\u201d Winton said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy little arts degree has created jobs and cultural value for over 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flash forward to 2025, and arts degrees have ballooned to cost in excess of $50,000, thanks to the Coalition\u2019s Jobs-Ready Graduate (JRG) scheme, introduced in 2021 to incentivise students into certain disciplines such as Stem (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), education and health.<\/p>\n
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While strongly condemned by Labor at the time, the Albanese government has deferred any reform to tuition fees to a newly established independent tertiary commission.<\/p>\n
Winton is among more than 100 high-profile Australians who have signed an open letter by the Australian Historical Association (AHA) urging Anthony Albanese to abolish the JRG scheme and implement an equitable university fee system that \u201cdoes not punish students who choose to study the humanities and social sciences\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat any Australian government should seek to make getting a humanities degree more difficult is upsetting \u2026 but the idea that a Labor government would do nothing at all to right this wrong is utterly mystifying,\u201d Winton said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Labor won\u2019t act to defend equity in education, what is the point of them \u2013 I mean, what do they really stand for?\u201d<\/p>\n
The signatories of the letter speak to the diversity of arts degree outcomes: writers Helen Garner, Kate Grenville and Nam Le; professional cook Stephanie Alexander; former cabinet minister and representative to Unesco Barry Jones; and former Australian of the Year, scientist Tim Flannery have all signed on.<\/p>\n
Grenville, who has authored 19 books, said her own studies in history and humanities were \u201cabsolutely essential\u201d to the writing of her books, many of which take place in the early years of colonisation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout those opportunities to explore both widely and deeply, I would not have written the books that have now become one of the ways general readers learn about our past,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Implicit in the introduction of JRG was the assumption students would be deterred from arts courses because of their price point, and attract them to cheaper degrees for \u201cin-demand\u201d courses.<\/p>\n
But the Universities Accord report, released last year, said the JRG package had \u201cfailed\u201d, finding only 1.5% of students applied to enrol in courses that they would not have under the prior contribution arrangements.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cThe job ready graduates package needs urgent remediation,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has left some students facing extremely high student contributions and large Help debts that do not reflect their future earning potential, and it has tilted the overall cost burden of higher education further on to students.\u201d<\/p>\n In its place, the review recommended a student contribution system based on potential lifetime earnings \u2013 the higher the future wages, the greater the student contribution.<\/p>\n Higher education expert Prof Andrew Norton said ideally graduates working full-time should complete repayments within similar ranges of years, regardless of which course they took.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is far from what happens under the current system \u2026 many arts graduates will struggle to ever get their debt under control,\u201d he wrote in The Conversation on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Convener of the letter, AHA president Prof Michelle Arrow, said four years after its implementation the effects of JRG were beginning to play out in the numbers of staff being cut in humanities disciplines across the country.<\/p>\n Australian National University proposed cuts include the Humanities Research Centre, the European Studies Centre and the Australian National Dictionary Centre, as well as significant reductions in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a thriving humanities infrastructure, you need people in the community, but you also need academics,\u201d Arrow said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to risk losing a whole generation of academics \u2026 these kinds of job cuts will continue while these fees are in place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tim Winton knows what it\u2019s like to be the first in a family to go to university \u2013 \u201cwhat a breakthrough that is, the kind of opportunities it provides\u201d. It was at the Western Australian Institute of Technology, studying arts, that he wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer, launching a four-decade writing career. This<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[498,955,2059,4089,6266,1326,3630,6265,6267,678,6263,489,781,6264],"class_list":{"0":"post-12632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-among","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-australian","11":"tag-australians","12":"tag-calling","13":"tag-dont","14":"tag-fees","15":"tag-highprofile","16":"tag-punish","17":"tag-students","18":"tag-tim","19":"tag-universities","20":"tag-university","21":"tag-winton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}