Surely a better solution is to provide lots of incentives to get a STEM degree - more carrot less stick.
I suspect their motivations if their stated goal is to get more STEM graduates, then this is not the best solution.
The funny thing about tax money is that it comes from taxes. Every carrot that is given out is someone's stick.
If the purpose of reorganizing the fees is to incentivize certain careers, it makes sense to align your carrots and sticks likewise.
STEM degrees are not for everyone, and to exclude a percentage of the population from higher education is unnecessary in Australia.
This is not universally true. At least, not all education leads to the same increase in human capital.
I would argue that getting educated about art history does nothing to increase human capital. You may have enjoyed learning about art history, but knowing what a tryptic is does not make you a more productive member of society.
And the fact that art history majors earn a lot less than stem majors on average seems to confirm this. Being able to build bridges is simply more valuable to society than knowing some obscure facts about dead people.
Precisely. There's a market for STEM majors already - so why subsidize it with taxpayer money? Shouldn't that be used for education that doesn't have monetary value?
Working as intended.
Lower cost for a STEM degree = lower risk in the event that you don’t find a job. Existing higher relative compensations = bigger carrot.
As others in this thread have said, this will reserve humanities degrees for those that can afford them, i.e. the rich, who will become the lawyers and managers. Many managers have humanities degrees.
And on a lighter note, where will our baristas come from if there's no arts graduates?
It would be a poor society that doesn't have people educated in the arts.
Who knows, maybe there is in fact a B.A. in Gender Studies requirement at my local coffee shop I don’t know about. ;)
You never know. They do keep demanding diversity. Diversity of thought might be just the thing.
But we already have BAs, presumably mostly folks that are naturally more geared towards that. And they’re not great for designing planes. So I’m proposing bringing the next generation of those same types of people, but to pursue engineering instead. You still need the technical education to do the work but perhaps it should be more than kids that grew up with Legos is what I’m saying.