Minister Tehan’s proposal undercuts the skills and qualities Australia needs for its future

The Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH) deeply regrets the recent decision by the Australian Government and Minister for Education Dan Tehan to revise tertiary fee structures in ways that disproportionately affect the humanities and social sciences, and that will profoundly disadvantage young people whose talents and passion are for those areas of study. This decision is contrary to sound employment evidence and will have no demonstrable public value. At their core the Government’s proposed changes will have unintended negative consequences, impacting heavily on the rights of individuals to access education and limiting Australia’s future.

We speak specifically from the perspective of the digital humanities, which is an inherently interdisciplinary area that applies digital methodologies to humanities research while simultaneously applying humanistic thinking to digital tools. Digital humanities is one of the key disciplines of the future. Its strong base in the humanities, and the ability of its students to understand the new concepts of information technology, including ‘big data’ and ‘deep learning’, will be needed to help Australians understand and confront the urgent challenges of the future, particularly those resulting from the impacts of coronavirus and climate change.

The Government claims that the fee changes are intended to encourage students to round out their degrees with additional supposedly ‘job-ready’ subjects. The suggestion that only those who study information technology or STEM disciplines are ready for the modern digital economy wrongly assumes that these skills are only taught within particular parts of a university. On the contrary, many, if not most areas of the humanities teach interdisciplinary skills, frequently embedding IT and related skills across the curriculum, together with the critical, reflective perspective on these that is essential for their innovative and ethical implementation. The effect of the proposed changes, which hugely increase the cost of humanities degrees, will suppress rather than foster and expand interdisciplinary activity of the vital sort which digital humanities, and indeed many humanities and social sciences disciplines, currently offer.

For some, the proposed changes will discourage them from adding much-needed training in humanities disciplines such as communication, critical and creative thinking—skills which have repeatedly proven their value in the workplace, and are highly sought after by employers. For others, where these advantages still outweigh the impact of increased costs, the doubling of fees will substantially increase the burden of student debt. Together these policy outcomes will disproportionately disadvantage specific cohorts, including women, First Peoples, and students from other marginalised and disadvantaged groups. Australia’s research capacity and knowledge economy will be significantly poorer as a result.

These decisions disenfranchise Australia’s youth, jeopardise the development of tomorrow’s leaders, and compromise Australia’s ability to fulfill its own employment needs and act as a major player on the global stage. At worst they will prompt some of our best and brightest young people to seek affordable humanities and social sciences degrees overseas, with the risk that we lose them for good. We call on the Government to abandon this proposal for changes to the tertiary education sector. We recommend that, instead, it ensures that current and future directives consider issues of equity, encourage rather than constrain interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary education, focus on evidence-based policy, and trust tertiary institutions to set their own directions for designing curricula that embed the skills and knowledge required by tomorrow’s workforce.

Professor Paul Millar, President Australasian Association for Digital Humanities on behalf of the Executive Committee