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As the fee policy applies at the course, and not the program, level, it will very strongly discourage engineering, IT or other science students form taking courses in business, sociology or other areas that might broaden their horizons.
So when the Minister says "If you want to study law, also think about studying IT", he also means "If you want to study IT, don't even think about studying law".
And so when he says "We are encouraging students to embrace diversity and not think about their education as a siloed degree", that's absolute rubbish.
And when he says, until now, "engineers and scientists have been subsidising arts graduates", see under the current arrangements, in humanities & English courses, students paid 52.2% of the total amount, whereas engineering & science students paid 33.5%.
And when he promises extra university places, note that the total resources to universities for each student are CUT in Engineering, Science, Maths, Society & culture, Clinical psychology, Communications, Languages, Allied health, Agriculture, Environmental studies & Medicine.
In many instances, these cuts are large. Resources to universities for medical students are cut by 33%, for environmental science by 30%, engineering by 17%, science by 17%, maths by 17%. They claim they want students to study these topics, but they're cutting resources for them.
In six areas - Medicine, Engineering, Science, Clinical psychology, Allied health, Environmental studies - there are cuts in BOTH student contributions and government contributions. That's why the losses to universities in some faculties are quite large.
In total, this doesn't provide new resources to tertiary education. It demands that universities do more with less. It wants students to flock to universities to improve their job prospects when universities have less capacity to teach those students.
Once again, this is not about rescuing universities or boosting education. It's about starving universities of the resources they need to do their job, and reordering them in the image of the Coalition.
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That is what happens when you produce a major change that is "budget neutral", as the Minister confirmed. Indeed, the cut in government contributions per student is substantially more than any cut in student contributions (so the average student share goes up from 42% to 48%).
Universities haven't publicly worked this out yet, but they'll be substantially worse off under this package. No additional resources, but far more demands on them. Students will be worse off because they'll be more badly served. This is not just an Arts problem. It's systemic.
