Last year Dan Tehan, the then Federal Minister for Education, announced policy changes to some university humanities degrees that caused some fuss because fees would rise by 113%. It has since passed parliament in October 2020 and in case you don’t remember why he did that here’s a quote from 19 June 2020.
The Guardian reported, “Tehan notes that just four industries are expected to account for 62% of employment growth in the next five years: healthcare, science and technology, education and construction. “It’s common sense. If Australia needs more educators, more health professionals and more engineers then we should incentivise students to pursue those careers.””
By Tehan’s rationale, Humanities degrees just don’t fit into that plan. Even though arguments were made that humanities perspectives run right you’re a plethora of industries the Morrison Government didn’t seem to care.
But let’s have a look at the wording of the proposal. You don’t have to be a master of linguistics to see that the word ‘incentivise’ is code for ‘I think you should head down this direction’. Capital L Liberals don’t want to “force” anyone into the type of degree anyone wants to study because forcing people to do things is communism….and that’s bad to a capital L Liberal.
But the Morrison Government does want to nudge you in the right direction…for the good of the country. ‘Incentivise’ kind of sits under the guise of individual choice (which is foundational for capital L Liberal thinkers) but this Government is saying we’d kind of like it however if you ‘choose from these limited options’. Is that so bad?
Well, it does kind of make you think “am I just here to serve the country and the economy’s needs?” It’s not unreasonable to ask, does the government consider you a subject of pure function or an individual with agency to choose freely? When you start to think about it, it starts to leave a bitter taste in your mouth.
When I first saw this policy idea I started to think about Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, who wrote an essay in 1986 The Forms of Capital. Now he’s a little difficult to read; he likes to write really long sentences that can sometimes run the length of a paragraph, but simply put there are three types of capital:
- Economic – resources that will help you make some cash.
- Social – networks that will help you make some cash.
- Cultural – knowledge that will help you make some cash.
It’s all about making the cash, not because Bourdieu said it should be, it’s just an observation he made. And with this policy the Morrison Government is leaning hard into the Cultural Capital, to go and make the cash.
As a side note, if you’re interested in how the Gross Domestic Product isn’t really the best way to measure productivity watch this TED Talk.
But I really want to introduce you to Louis Althusser, a structural Marxist. In 1970 Althusser wrote Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation), an examination of state apparatuses and the perpetuation of ideology. Essentially he asks what kind of influence do these social structures have on individual choice.
I know some of you are thinking, “oh Lordy what a title!” And for those of you who bristled when you read ‘Marxist’ I implore you to hang around; this post isn’t a call to arms for Marxism but Althusser does take an interesting look at how these systems (government) and structures (education) funnel us down a particular path. And look, depending on where you fall on the political spectrum, Althusser’s critique is either a warning or a blueprint.
So here’s the brief version of this critique. Althusser says society has structures that dominate a population so they behave in a certain (read: acceptable) way – this is how ideology is perpetuated.
And he breaks these structures into two sections
- Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) – police, courts, government, military;
- Ideology State Apparatus (ISA) – education, religion, media, social group.
If you’re asking how can the police, courts, government and military can be repressive you don’t have to look further than the #BlackLivesMatters protests to see that.
In this case, government (RSA) and educational institutions (ISA) tell you what you should learn by privileging certain types of information. So a careers counsellor/teacher/parent might say something like, “you know the government says that healthcare, science and technology, education and construction are the jobs of the future and are making it easier to study in those fields so perhaps start to look in that direction for a career. Perhaps for your HSC/VCE you should choose subjects that head down that path”. That doesn’t sound so far-fetched does it?
A critical thinker will probably ask, can the government predict the future of jobs? Well, nah. Not without some direct action.
Now from here you can lean into Michel Foucault and this theory of Governmentality which continues Althusser’s arugments.
The concept of governmentality says the government is an organized political power but governmentality reaches beyond ‘official recognized power’ and expands it to include the active consent and willingness of individuals to participate in their own governance. Simply, how are you influenced into making a decision? Or even how to make the correct/right decision?
To explain, think about how you come to some decisions; is it just your own thoughts and experiences? Do you ask parents, friends, media, look around to see who is doing what? How much are you influenced by them?
I mean, when it comes to parents, it’s not going to be surprising if they start spruiking the benefits of looking at fields the government is promoting. Parents are looking out for their children, nothing malicious in that advice; they want security for their children. Because you know, a career in the humanities may feed your soul but it won’t feed your stomach because the “employment growth in the next five years [is in] health, science and technology, education and construction”. And those other degrees cost so much money!!!!
It’s not surprising if someone starts thinking, “you know, job security is good so yeah I should probably start looking towards those sorts of jobs; secure job and no exhorbitant HECS debt”.
By the way, pssst, humanities graduates earn as much as those in science and maths. Keep that in mind for a minute.
But that kind of influence coming in from all sides and keeps you in check. Once again, no-one’s forcing you to make these decisions, and you know…it seems like common sense right?
And common sense is something that Antonio Gramsci, Italian Marxist thinker, calls Cultural Hegemony and needs to be examined. Cultural hegemony is ‘the imposed, ruling-class worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm’.
And the problem with ‘common sense’ is that no-one really questions it – it’s just sort of accepted as the right and best way to do things. How does something become common sense?
If there is constant messaging that the future jobs will be in healthcare, science and technology, education and construction then that just becomes common sense. People are always talking, you can’t even remember how it all began, it just is. So it must be true? Tehan himself used the words “common sense” for a reason.
Once again, it’s not that these jobs aren’t necessary; it’s the fact that the Morrison Government is making a point of privileging these fields of study over the humanities; that these jobs are more important. What’s their motivation?
Let’s get back to Dan Tehan and Althusser.
Althusser goes a bit deeper and argues that ISAs function as a repression. Cynically speaking, Althusser says everyone has to role to perform in the means of production.
“Each mass enjected en route is practically provided with the ideology which suits the role it has to fulfil in a class society: the role of the exploited […] the role of the agent of exploitation […] the agent of repression […] ability to manipulate”
Althusser goes further explains how ISAs reproduce the ideology of the day; the ideology of today is that that future jobs are in…..you could probably recite the four industries by now right?
“Children from every class […] are squeezed between the family State apparatus and the educational State apparatus, it drums into them […] the ruling ideology in its pure state […] around the age of sixteen, a huge mass of children are ejected ‘into production’. […] Each mass ejected en route is practically provided with the ideology which suits the role it has to fulfil in class society: the role of the exploited […] the role of the agent of exploitation”.
Althusser states that
“The individual in question behaves in such a way, adopts such and such a practical attitude, and, what is more, participates in certain regular practices which are those of the ideological apparatus on which ‘depend’ the ideas which he has in all consciousness freely chosen as a subject”.
Now you may find it a little heavy handed when Althusser says that each subject (person) is playing a role of the exploited or exploiter. But re-read Tehan’s quote above – he’s looking to use each person of the population as a function.
Althusser is speaking truth to power. Althusser is basically saying governments don’t want people to flourish they want them to be functional. Don’t question, just do.
You may say, well that’s just the way society is, in order for a society to function we need people to fulfil that function – we need healthcare, science, technology, education, and construction workers – what’s so bad about that? Nothing inherently but it’s the lack of choice and value judgement (see Bourdieu) this implies to other professions outside of these industries.
What makes this policy introduced by the Morrison Government distasteful, to be polite, is that these card carrying capital L Liberals often quote ‘individual’ choice as the bedrock of their philosophy, and government intervention as the work of the devil. But right here, doesn’t this policy intervene with a population in a way that goes against their own philosophy?
The Morrison Government can say they are not forcing anyone simply ‘incentivising’ them; and I call that a bad faith argument. It’s hypocritical.
The reality is that the Morrison Government is doing more than incentivizing students to move into these industries is that in order to do that they must introduce disincentives from students picking careers outside of these industries.
Here’s Tehan himself to tell you.
“To power our post-Covid economy recovery, Australia will need more educators, more health professional and more engineers, and this is why we are sending a price signal to encourage people to study in areas of expected unemployment growth,” Tehan argues.
Simply saying you are only encouraging an activity is not benign language when you simultaneously make the alternative choice very difficult.
So why am I banging on about all this. Well you may well have guessed by now that I have a humanities degree; two in fact. That’s how I know about Bourdieu, Foucault and Althusser and the difference between a capital L Liberal and a progressive liberal.
That puts me in the perfect position to critically think about what the Morrison Government is trying to achieve here and what it all means. That’s what humanities degrees do.
Simply saying you are only encouraging an activity is not benign language when you simultaneously make the alternative choice very difficult.
So why am I banging on about all this. Well you may well have guessed by now that I have a humanities degree; two in fact. That’s how I know about Bourdieu, Foucault and Althusser and the difference between a capital L Liberal and a progressive liberal.
That puts me in the perfect position to critically think about what the Morrison Government is trying to achieve here and what it all means. That’s what humanities degrees do.
There have been arguments put forward here and here that this is in fact an ideological war.
Now I said that this post wasn’t going to be a call to arms for the Marxists out there; and it’s not. It’s about pointing out the hypocritical argument about individual choice that has been put forward by the Morrison Government. I’m not trying to convert anyone to Marxist theory, but I will suggest that the Morrison Government stop insulting the population with hypocritical philosophical arguments. If you stand for personal choice, then damn well stand by it.
But to anyone who wants to dismiss what I’ve said because Althusser was a Marxist, liberal arts/humanities degrees are not just for the left. Remember Tony Abbott was out there championing a university degree on ‘western civilisation’?
Oh but this one is funded. So I guess you have to do the ‘right’ kind of humanities.
