14 August 2020

Dear Minister Tehan

As President of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) in Australia, I write on behalf of CHASS in response to the draft legislation for the Job-ready Graduates Package released this week.

Others have noted that the proposed changes will likely not have the effects the government desires and may have deleterious unintended consequences. I wish to focus on the value of education in HASS disciplines for producing job ready graduates, and the burden the changes will impose on our next generation of Australians, particularly young women.

While encouraging additional students towards the STEM disciplines has some merit, there is no reason to actively dissuade students from studying subjects like criminology, history or philosophy. To do so runs counter to an emerging consensus that current developments in the domestic labour market makes the skills learned in HASS more valuable . Some of the fastest growing job areas for university graduates are new, many of which require exactly the skills and experiences that the study of HASS subjects can provide. Content Specialists, Customer Officers, Data Scientists, and Sustainability Analysts are in high demand. These jobs did not exist five years ago, and a strong humanities or social science degree provides a foundation for working in these and the new, related fields that will inevitably emerge in the coming years. Australia’s global position as an English speaking, cosmopolitan society in the Asia Pacific region, with a world-class higher education sector, means that our competitive advantage lies in areas closely aligned to the study of human action and society in all its myriad forms.