Folks, let me explain how by cutting funding to the humanities and increasing student fees the government is actually creating incentives for unis to enroll *more* arts students.

(For my sins I used to work in higher ed policy, I know too much boring stuff in this space)

At the moments arts degrees are funded about 50/50 between the government and students. About $6,000 each per year. The new funding model will see the government spend only $1000, while students fork out $14,000.

So you'd expect that to mean fewer students enrolling in that program? Wrong.

A couple of years ago the government capped student places, after Labor uncapped them. But that cap doesn't stop universities actually enrolling more students. It just means the government won't fund their share once the cap is reached.

With arts degrees now effectively fully student funded (92% of the cost borne by the student), that means universities will get 92% of the revenue for over-enrolling above the cap, whereas under the current system they would only get 50%.

On the other hand, over-enrolling a science degree, for example, would only get them 10-20% of the total course cost.

Not only that, but arts degrees are relatively low-cost to deliver compared to STEM degrees, which means the "profit" margin for the uni is greater.

So in summary, this means the proposed new funding model actually gives universities an incentive to enroll more arts students in order to boost their budget bottom line.

Which is the opposite of Tehan's stated goal. Sounds like they've really thought this through!

IMO the story here isn’t “humanities are dead”. Plenty of students will keep enrolling (possibly even more than now, for reasons above). They’ll just have huge debts for decades. Bigger story is the overall shift of higher ed cost being born mostly by students for the first time.