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The annoying part is that most of the politicians have humanities degrees and are of an age where their degree was probably free in Australia. $40K is a lot for

The annoying part is that most of the politicians have humanities degrees and are of an age where their degree was probably free in Australia. $40K is a lot for an arts degree. 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.

pb7 6y ago
> $40K is a lot for an arts degree. 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.
- chadcmulligan 6y ago
  Humanities is also valuable - history, economics, traditional liberal arts are all valuable knowledge. I have one of each (B.Sc / B.A.) and a lot of the stuff I learnt in the BA is very useful, for one thing it gives you the skills to argue with politicians who are, in the main, lawyers and professional arguers. 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.
  - pb7 6y ago
    Humanities won’t go away. At some point, equilibrium will be reached and there will be an appropriate number of people going into each. Only the foolish think that liberal arts are completely worthless — but there are too many people that go into them with no special talent to give them an edge in a very limited employment market. I know from experience how common it is for people to decide to go to college because that’s the thing to do, and oh, well I guess I have to decide on a field to proceed with this so might as well choose something that my friends are doing. The thinking is backwards. First you have to decide what you want to do in life, calculate how that will provide for you financially, then figure out what education you need to get there. Who knows, maybe there is in fact a B.A. in Gender Studies requirement at my local coffee shop I don’t know about. ;)
    - chadcmulligan 6y ago
      Sure, but, in general, the people doing a BA in gender studies probably won't make a great addition to the STEM workforce, but the BA will teach them other valuable skills, and they'll end up in teaching or management or something. To exclude these people from an education is short sighted in my opinion, the more educated people we have the better.
      - pb7 6y ago
        >the people doing a BA in gender studies probably won't make a great addition to the STEM workforce You never know. They do keep demanding diversity. Diversity of thought might be just the thing.
        chadcmulligan 6y ago
        I think you've made my point - BA's in things you may not think of may end up being useful, why exclude them?
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        pb7 6y ago
        I think we’re in general agreement. 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.
        chadcmulligan 6y ago
        Yah, maybe, this is part of a big picture that I've been thinking about lately - is the economy there to serve people, or are the people there to serve the economy. The libs want the dial set very much to the people serve the economy, and they're taking advantage of the current situation to make it so. I'm more an economy is there to serve the people, so let's make things so that people have a good life, and figure out how we can do this.
- triceratops 6y ago
  How is it working as intended? The expected reward in STEM is already high but it's still necessary for the government to reduce the risk? How does that logic work exactly? Why not prop up low-expected-reward, high-risk fields and let the market pay for the fields that provide monetary value?
dahfizz 6y ago
> more carrot less stick. 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.
- chadcmulligan 6y ago
  But future taxes are derived from people who can earn a living, if we have an uneducated workforce, to be a bit trite - education is an investment in human capital. STEM degrees are not for everyone, and to exclude a percentage of the population from higher education is unnecessary in Australia.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    > education is an investment in human capital. 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.
    - chadcmulligan 6y ago
      There was a time when I would have come close to agreeing with that, the trouble is the ones building the bridge are people, and thats where the humanities comes in, its the study of people, even art history is valuable, and who knows where it will lead, maybe bridge design, someone has to design the pretty bits on bridges and buildings.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      > the fact that art history majors earn a lot less than stem majors on average seems to confirm this 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?

pb7 6y ago

> $40K is a lot for an arts degree. 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.

chadcmulligan 6y ago
Humanities is also valuable - history, economics, traditional liberal arts are all valuable knowledge. I have one of each (B.Sc / B.A.) and a lot of the stuff I learnt in the BA is very useful, for one thing it gives you the skills to argue with politicians who are, in the main, lawyers and professional arguers. 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.
- pb7 6y ago
  Humanities won’t go away. At some point, equilibrium will be reached and there will be an appropriate number of people going into each. Only the foolish think that liberal arts are completely worthless — but there are too many people that go into them with no special talent to give them an edge in a very limited employment market. I know from experience how common it is for people to decide to go to college because that’s the thing to do, and oh, well I guess I have to decide on a field to proceed with this so might as well choose something that my friends are doing. The thinking is backwards. First you have to decide what you want to do in life, calculate how that will provide for you financially, then figure out what education you need to get there. Who knows, maybe there is in fact a B.A. in Gender Studies requirement at my local coffee shop I don’t know about. ;)
  - chadcmulligan 6y ago
    Sure, but, in general, the people doing a BA in gender studies probably won't make a great addition to the STEM workforce, but the BA will teach them other valuable skills, and they'll end up in teaching or management or something. To exclude these people from an education is short sighted in my opinion, the more educated people we have the better.
    - pb7 6y ago
      >the people doing a BA in gender studies probably won't make a great addition to the STEM workforce You never know. They do keep demanding diversity. Diversity of thought might be just the thing.
      - chadcmulligan 6y ago
        I think you've made my point - BA's in things you may not think of may end up being useful, why exclude them?
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        pb7 6y ago
        I think we’re in general agreement. 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.
        chadcmulligan 6y ago
        Yah, maybe, this is part of a big picture that I've been thinking about lately - is the economy there to serve people, or are the people there to serve the economy. The libs want the dial set very much to the people serve the economy, and they're taking advantage of the current situation to make it so. I'm more an economy is there to serve the people, so let's make things so that people have a good life, and figure out how we can do this.
triceratops 6y ago
How is it working as intended? The expected reward in STEM is already high but it's still necessary for the government to reduce the risk? How does that logic work exactly? Why not prop up low-expected-reward, high-risk fields and let the market pay for the fields that provide monetary value?

dahfizz 6y ago

> more carrot less stick. 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.

chadcmulligan 6y ago
But future taxes are derived from people who can earn a living, if we have an uneducated workforce, to be a bit trite - education is an investment in human capital. STEM degrees are not for everyone, and to exclude a percentage of the population from higher education is unnecessary in Australia.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  > education is an investment in human capital. 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.
  - chadcmulligan 6y ago
    There was a time when I would have come close to agreeing with that, the trouble is the ones building the bridge are people, and thats where the humanities comes in, its the study of people, even art history is valuable, and who knows where it will lead, maybe bridge design, someone has to design the pretty bits on bridges and buildings.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > the fact that art history majors earn a lot less than stem majors on average seems to confirm this 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?