By Dr Neville Buch, the opinions expressed are the author’s own
On 24 July 2025, an “Open Letter to the Prime Minister: Restoring Equity in Higher Education” was produced by a distinguished group of individuals, “with a range of political beliefs whose contributions to Australian life owe significantly to our Bachelor of Arts (BA) degrees.” The letter was a request for the Prime Minister to lead the repeal, in the Australian Parliament, of the Job-ready Graduates (JRG) Package that the Morrison government introduced in 2021. The JRG bill, becoming an Act, has been described as ‘inequitable’, ‘pernicious’, and ‘perverse’ among the parliamentarians themselves. This is my open letter to the Australian communities that we — the communities — cannot allow the government to retain such legislative condition of inequity.
Open-letter-on-Equity-in-Higher-Ed-24-July
Neville Buch. An Open Letter for Equity
The humanities and social science “have traditionally been popular choices for Indigenous, regional, and female students” but the humanities and social science also benefits everyone, include white males and other WASPs. I am one of that category. Reducing the coursework and research programs of the humanities and social science disadvantaged everyone, some more than most. The idea of “graduates not being job-ready” is ‘wrong’. More to the point, in an intellectual argument – one grounded in facts – the claim is illogical, such that those advocates who still make the claim are being stupid. FACT, for example, the trickle-down economics is a complete failure and we had 30 years for ‘falseness’ to prove itself true. It has not.
Without the level (quality and quantity) of humanities and social sciences coursework and research program which had existed half-a-century ago, our society will not be able to think in the generalist educations, with strong employment prospects upon completion. FACT, for example, “three years after completion, [arts] graduates are employed at the same rate as science or maths graduates.” “The 2024 Australian Universities Accord Final Report declared that the JRG package had ‘failed.’”
Let’s be frank. The design of the JRG package only advantage the assholish (i.e. high-level of arrogance and wilful ignorance), scientificist-ideolog, instrumental-stupid-rationalist thinking, wealthy businessmen, and a few women in the same condition. It benefits no one else. More students now face crushing debts, a reduction of investment in humanities and social sciences programs for society’s disadvantage. And this condition in “an era of severe international turmoil, climate crisis, rising disinformation, and declining trust in democratic principles.” A humanities and social science higher education is what provides the solutions to deal with the stress of global knowledges through reasoned debate, and civic literacy. “Graduates of the humanities and social sciences are well placed to address the meaning and source of many of the hatreds and prejudices driving the world today.” The designers and implementers of the JRG package have disadvantaged Australia facing uncertain geopolitical trends. “If younger Australians do not undertake the study of our region, our contexts, our antiquity, our heritage, and our values, who, precisely, will?”
The narrow thinking of these stupid businessmen, and a few businesswomen, presume, falsely, that technical, ‘job-ready’, narrow training produces deep understanding and adaptable proficiencies. It does not. Only the quality and quantity of teaching and research we had once in the humanities and social sciences, before massive monetary reduction in this targeted de-funding, can produce deep understanding and adaptable proficiencies. The answer is not even proficiency; it is comprehensive understanding which takes in proficiency as one small element in understanding.
The JRG must be abolish and new fee regime instituted whereby students who choose to study the humanities and social sciences are not punished. “Our university sector should instead reflect the values of a society that takes a humane and ethical responsibility for its past and future.”
Featured Image: Composite Images purchased from Dreamstime.
Neville Buch
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