SA Centre Alliance kills hope for university arts and humanities

The American writer, David Foster Wallace, gave a great speech at the 2005 Kenyon College Commencement Address. It wasn't your typical speech about tolerating difference or promoting equality. It had none of the 'right-on', PC qualities one would expect of a renowned and popular novelist, much adored by young people.

He said that, "Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."

Unfortunately, the price of learning how to think, just got 'totally hosed' by a South Australian minor party Centre Alliance (formerly the Nick XenophonTeam), which backed major changes to university course funding.

For Law and economics, management and commerce, humanities and the social sciences, fees will more than double, putting them in the highest price band of $14,500 a year.

Currently arts degrees cost around $21,000 but thanks to Rebekha Sharkie MP and Senator Stirling Griff from the SA Centre Alliance, the total cost of an Arts degree will be around $45,000 or more.

The Government will increase its contribution to the cost of nursing, psychology, English, languages, teaching, agriculture, maths, science, health and architecture, making them those disciplines cheaper.

Sharkie and Griff's vote was bought by allocating an extra 12,000 Commonwealth funded places to South Australian basket-case universities: The University of Adelaide, the University of SA and Flinders University, over four-years.

These universities have driven ATAR entry scores so low, your blood pressure drops just looking at them. They've been fudging domestic enrolment figures for the last ten years by stating that 'bums on seats' equals full time equivalent enrolments.

They are the 'dead parrots' of the Australian tertiary education system. They were catatonic before Covid-19, now they have, in all but name, joined what's left in capability and mental acuity of the Australian TAFE system.

Those 12,000 Commonwealth places will be divided up and allocated by the same boffins who ran these institutions in to the ground.

Indeed, the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, Peter Rathjen, is being investigated by the SA Independent Commissioner Against Corruption, for allegedly 'hugging and kissing' two female employees in unwanted sexual advances and covering it up.

Those Commonwealth places certainly won't go to tertiary arts education as back in 2018, the new Marshall Government announced cuts totalling $31.9 million from the arts.