ARTS DEGREES AT AUSTRALIAN universities are predicted to cost more than fifty thousand dollars:
In practice, the legislation meant students wanting to study classical subjects such as history, politics and philosophy as well as communications faced fee increases of 113 per cent. It immediately increased the price of standard three-year arts degrees to above $40,000; next year, the cost will exceed $50,000.
To me this is a pricing error. You can see alternative prices set one of three ways. The first, which I favour, is that the cost to a student of a degree should be zero; and the benefit they get in the form of higher wages taken out in the tax system. Fine, socialism, got it. The second, which is the 'realist' position, is that universities are organisations in a market providing a commodity, which should be obliged to cover the costs of what they provide through fees to students who expect to enter into a middle-class career, rather than having those well-off kids provided for by the taxpayer. In this model, fifty thousand is still far too high: on a transactional basis, a three-year BA in no way guarantees entry into that middle-class career, much less the promise of a salary bump of >$50k (compared to not having a 3 year BA). Entry level positions need a good deal more these days than a three year degree.
Lastly, you can look at university humanities degrees as the continuation of private school education, which rather than the promise of entry into middle-class career, promise the exclusive entry into a class which has a hold on those careers. To some extent this reflects already the cohorts of students who have been studying those degrees for decades (and hence the 'wealth shock', of kids from public schools suddenly encountering these people, when they start uni). That university education really is the middle class's way of reproducing its own values has always been pronounced silently in policy.
But already existing high schools like Ascham and SCEGGS charge >$40k just for single years' tuition. These are the pipelines for the kinds of students who would be the market for >$50,000 arts degrees, since for them, the transactional benefit of education in future earnings has already been priced in to the private schools they've already attended. In this model, fifty grand for a whole degree is far, far too low. If this is the model of humanities education, along the lines of Oxbridge in the UK and the elite colleges in the United States, that ought to be expressed in the price, and allow universities to actually hire teaching staff accordingly!
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