Job Ready Graduates delivered what the previous Coalition Government wanted – reducing local HASS student numbers between 2015 and 2024.
Frank Larkins (Uni Melbourne) identifies a 10% decline in domestic student social science enrolments across the decade, with humanities numbers down 8%.
In contrast, engineering and tech was up 32% and medical and health sciences enrolments increased by 25%. A “significant contributor” to the local HASS drop, Professor Larkins suggests. was JRG, “that substantially increased course fees and delivered negative signals.”
However international students saved both HASS fields of education from an overall collapse in enrolments. While local students in social sciences fell by 30,000, internationals increased 28,000. Professor Larkins points out that by 2024 internationals were 37% of social science enrolments, due to education management and commerce being “high priorities.”
And humanities numbers were actually up 10,000 over the decade, due to a 38,000 increase in internationals off setting a 26,000 decline in locals enrolling. Professor Larkins does comment on why more international students were interested in humanities.
His findings are based consolidating DoE’s 12 fields of education into six for the decade ending in the most recent annual numbers.
Overall he points to a “pronounced” domestic demand shift, with enrolments in science-based courses increasing nearly 90,000 and humanities down 56,000.
And he demonstrates the system’s dependence on internationals, with overseas enrolments increasing in all his six fields of education and representing 85% of growth.