education

Demand for arts and humanities still high despite Coalition university fee increases

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Demand for arts and humanities university courses has risen in some states, despite the federal government’s fee increases aimed at pushing students into more “job-ready” degrees.

Students appear willing to pay increases of up to 113%, with university offers for society and culture degrees up 25% in Queensland among year 12 school leavers. Offers for the creative arts are also up 11.3%, according to early data from the Queensland tertiary admissions centre.

In contrast, offers for information technology, which had its student degree cost slashed from $9,698 to $7,700, are up only 18.8%, and engineering, with the same discount, is up 15%.

In New South Wales, preferences for society and culture rose 5.7%, and nearly 2,000 more students applied than at the same time last year.

Despite student fees more than doubling from $6,804 a year to $14,500, 40.6% of NSW prospective students chose it as their first preference, by far the largest cohort, although the figure is down slightly on 41.3% in 2020.

However, in Victoria the number of applications (at any preference) to study arts and the humanities fell 7.3%, to 15,494 – even as total undergraduate applications rose 1.5%. Arts and humanities still made up 23% of all applications.

Commerce and law, whose fees also rose, had a drop in Victoria. Commerce applications dropped 3.4% and law applications 3.6%.

Final enrolment numbers will not be known until after the census at the end of March. Until then, students can drop out or change courses without being charged.

Higher education expert Andrew Norton, from the Australian National University, said it appeared the government’s changes to student contributions were not having a “dramatic” effect on students’ choices.

“[Applications] are up overall, including in some states’ arts degree fields that have more than doubled in price,” he said.

In June last year, the architect of the Hecs scheme, Bruce Chapman, predicted the fee rises would not move students into the areas the government wanted to prioritise.

Norton said the dip in applications in Victoria was among any preferences, not just first preferences, which made its data different from NSW.

“In Victoria the number of arts applications at any preference level is down – $14,500 a year might be too much to pay for a second or lower preference course,” he said.

“But we have to wait for enrolment data to see the true effects of changed student contributions.”

Under last year’s changes, fees were reduced for agriculture and maths by 62%, teaching, nursing, English and languages by 46%, and science, health, architecture, IT and engineering by 20%.

The cost of humanities rose 113%, and law and commerce 28%.

The then-education minister, Dan Tehan, said the changes would “incentivise students to make more job-relevant choices … by reducing the student contribution in areas of expected employment growth and demand”.

“It’s common sense,” he said in a speech to the press club. “If Australia needs more educators, more health professionals and more engineers then we should incentivise students to pursue those careers.”

In NSW, overall applications rose 7.5%, meaning the percentage of humanities applications out of the total dropped slightly from 41.3% to 40.6%.

Applications for health degrees rose 13.5% and architecture rose by 10%.

Information technology rose 5.7%, and natural and physical sciences rose 4.3% – both slightly less than society and culture.

Applications for creative arts and management and commerce, which both had degree costs raised, were the only areas to drop – by 1.2% and 2.1% respectively.

In Queensland, offers for education rose 35.2%, natural and physical sciences rose 30%, architecture rose 18.8% and agriculture rose 8.8%.

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