The employment outcomes of Arts graduates

[brendan]

But this has clearly turned away from the topic at hand and become a case of you wanting to take Brendan on

You have to honest dan that you've wanted to take him on for a long time, you used to support Brendan's posting on this site, but ever since he targeted your welcome message on the homepage, you've gone a bit off him

I know i'm being antagonistic, but i can't shake the feeling that this is personal

That's an interesting thought. I do agree that he choosing to go after the messenger, instead of addressing the message.

[brendan]

This might have been lost in all the nonsense in this thread, but I will post it again:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Heckler/Degrees-of-difficulty/2005/04/24/1114281450827.html
Degrees of difficulty
April 25, 2005
Kim Smee defends her fellow arts graduates from the class of arse.

Sitting somewhere between the battle of public versus private school and white collar versus blue is the most irritating class war of them all - science graduate versus arts or bachelor of arse graduates, as some like to say.

As a graduate of two arts degrees, I take offence at science students' claims that I do not have real degrees. Like you pharmacological, veterinarian, molecular biology types, my years on campus ground were ones of sweat and tears.

Every day, or so, I had to crawl out of bed and sober up with a splash of cool water as the crack of midday sun pierced through the bathroom window. I had to drive to university only to discover that every parking space had been greedily snatched up by a science student hours before.

When you could quietly sit in the cafeteria corner and leisurely read your physics texts, I was forced to sit with a loud post-modernist clan of intertextual canonists and brainstorm for a group project on the symbolism of the white dove in the final scenes of Blade Runner, the director's cut.

Not to mention all those lavish parties you could attend. Law students had their law revues, medical students had cruises and so on. Arts students? We were still analysing what kind of party would be appropriate on our graduation day.

While my father was as proud as punch on that special day of black hats that make your hair look like a half-sucked mango, even he could not resist the urge to make a jibe.

"What's the difference between a science graduate, an engineering graduate and an arts graduate?" he asked. "The science graduate asks why it works, the engineering graduate asks how it works and the arts graduate asks if you would like fries with that!"

But dad's joke ran off me like water off a duck's back. What a completely untrue, ignorant thing to say. I brought him leftover food for almost two years and he didn't even know we called them chips.

But back to you left-handed brain drivers. In case you think you had to study harder than us to get to that special day, just remember that we slaved over pages of theories for 10 months, but your exams were over in an hour.

When you were asked a question in class all you had to do was answer it correctly, while we had to argue why the answer was not true but a subjective falsehood of truth, and relate it back to intertextuality and post-modernism. Or something.

And when the second Big Bang comes and the few remaining survivors are wandering this Earth, they are not going to want doctors to heal their wounds and scientists to figure out what went wrong. No! The question on everyone's lips will be, how does this relate to the climax in Blade Runner, the director's cut?

So ditch your scientific snobbery and go back to your high-paying jobs without uttering a word of arts degree criticism and let us get back to reading the jobs classifieds and scratching our heads.

[bucket]

I know i'm being antagonistic, but i can't shake the feeling that this is personal

Bahaha of course this is personal!! But I wouldn't bet that enwiabe will admit to that.

[humph]

Yawn. This argument seems to go on forever.

My take:
- Brendan posts articles about Arts degrees and related employment statistics
- Many Arts students get annoyed about this and question his agenda
- Brendan (correctly) points out their own subjectivity in interpreting the articles
- Brendan does not declare his agenda

I personally would like to know Brendan's motivation for posting the articles. Certainly he is aware of the effect it has on many people on this board. But Brendan isn't an Arts student, so he doesn't really have any reason to have a personal interest in this topic. So why does he continually post articles about the employment opportunities etc of people with Arts degrees?

[brendan]

Yawn. This argument seems to go on forever.

My take:
- Brendan posts articles about Arts degrees and related employment statistics
- Many Arts students get annoyed about this and question his agenda
- Brendan (correctly) points out their own subjectivity in interpreting the articles
- Brendan does not declare his agenda

I personally would like to know Brendan's motivation for posting the articles. Certainly he is aware of the effect it has on many people on this board. But Brendan isn't an Arts student, so he doesn't really have any reason to have a personal interest in this topic. So why does he continually post articles about the employment opportunities etc of people with Arts degrees?

The purpose of my series of threads on employment outcomes has always been one and the same: to inform.

[enwiabe]

oh yes, the NOBLE brendan, who informs the masses... who informs us of arts employment figures in MUCH higher numbers than any other field including his own

[humph]

Yawn. This argument seems to go on forever.

My take:
- Brendan posts articles about Arts degrees and related employment statistics
- Many Arts students get annoyed about this and question his agenda
- Brendan (correctly) points out their own subjectivity in interpreting the articles
- Brendan does not declare his agenda

I personally would like to know Brendan's motivation for posting the articles. Certainly he is aware of the effect it has on many people on this board. But Brendan isn't an Arts student, so he doesn't really have any reason to have a personal interest in this topic. So why does he continually post articles about the employment opportunities etc of people with Arts degrees?

The purpose of my series of threads on employment outcomes has always been one and the same: to inform.

Well that's fair enough. Though it must be noted that until yesterday you seemed only interested in informing people of the employment outcomes associated with an Arts degree, and predominantly highlighting high unemployment figures in Arts graduates or Arts graduates being employed in areas in which their degrees are unnecessary.

[brendan]

highlighting high unemployment figures in Arts graduates or Arts graduates being employed in areas in which their degrees are unnecessary.

"High" or "Low" is in the eye of the beholder, it's higher than other fields of study. Additionally, there is also wages, and employer perception of literacy skills:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/11/15/1226319000858.html
Graduate Careers Australia executive director Cindy Tilbrook said while the pain might be eased by vacancies due to an ageing workforce and an continuing skills shortage in areas such as health and engineering, those with a "less defined" career path from humanities or generalist degrees were more likely to struggle to find work.
"They are the ones who feel it even in good times because their outcomes are not as good as those in skill-shortage areas," she said.

http://andrewnorton.info/2008/11/over-qualified-workers/
26.3% of graduates were working in jobs that the ABS occupational classifications system says require vocational or no post-secondary education rather than higher education. That’s only .2% lower than last year. Work I have done on data from the 2006 census suggests that it is the generalist degrees, and particularly arts (with the exception of those with degrees in ‘philosophy and religious studies’), that drag down the average. About 40% of other Arts graduates are in jobs that don’t require higher education.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Education/documents/2007/02/07/UUKfulltext.pdf
One of the first analyses to consider the economic benefits of higher education subjects found that men in possession of an undergraduate degree achieved an earnings premium of approximately 15% over individuals in  possession of A-levels.The corresponding estimate for women was 19%.
However, men in possession of mathematics degrees achieved a 25.7% earnings premium over those with A-levels as their highest qualification, while corresponding women achieved a 38.6% earnings premium. In contrast,the premium for men in possession of undergraduate degrees in the arts was 4% less relative to those individuals with A-levels,whilst women achieved a  17% premium. Irrespective of the subject of study,the financial benefit of completing a degree is much greater for women than for men, but this may be due to the relatively low earnings of non-graduate women.

http://www.cis.org.au/Policy/winter00/polwin00-9.htm
… a survey by ACNielsen found that employers thought their Arts graduates had below average literacy skills. …
Since the mid-1970s Arts graduates have in each decade been experiencing a more difficult transition from study to work, to the point where more than 30% are still looking for full-time work four months after graduating. While their labour market position improves substantially over time, they never come close to matching their peers in some other degrees. People with degrees in what the Australian Bureau of Statistics calls ‘society and culture’ have unemployment rates about 50% above those of graduates generally. Wages too remain well below average, probably partly because some graduates are working in jobs for which degrees are not required.

[Eriny]

I don't think it matters whether or not Brendan himself is 'pro' or 'anti' arts, although we can certainly have our suspicions. Indeed, I'm guilty of having suspicions! This is evident in my first post in this thread:

You may well be a 'just the messenger', Brendan, I don't know, but I don't think that's it, you're probably too clever for that. But the quote you provided in the first post takes the article out of context. The article is not about 'arts students to have difficulty finding jobs', rather, it's another scare piece on the economic downturn and about how young people in general will find things more hard than the previous generation. The mention of people who do 'generalist degrees' just explores where the 'crisis' might hit. Note: Not all generalist degrees are also Arts degrees. So, in merely naming the topic as you do, you're providing us a reinterpretation of the entire article either explicitly or inadvertently. Perhaps you're trying to provoke some kind of response in people who are Arts students or are sympathetic to Arts students. Well done if you are, because look at how I'm responding.

Also, it's interesting to note that you don't post any 'pro-Arts' pieces, despite there being lots out there. Melbourne University's propaganda on why generalist degrees are a really good idea being one such case. Probably more importantly, the fact that last year Arts at UoM was the most popular course to do and required an ENTER of over 85, showed that not just people see the benefits of an Arts degree, but high performing students who are presumably quite smart see the benefits of doing an Arts degree.

Although, I suppose that last point is now technically incorrect with the advent of this thread (kind of...): http://vcenotes.com/forum/index.php/topic,8136.0.html

But I don't really think this stuff is very interesting to talk about. I also have no real interest in 'shooting the messenger' anymore than what I already have. Like it or not, we are definitely dealing with approximations of 'facts', it's the interpretation of them that's getting spiky (we all have to admit though, job outcomes *do* matter to everyone, just to differing extents). In any case, if Brendan chooses to state his opinion, that's up to him, but as of yet no debate has developed which would really allow him to have an opinion. Most of this thread and the other thread have been about how he is so 'anti-arts' and all we've done is the equivalent of asking 'so are you anti-arts???!!!' then not believing him when he says 'no'. It would be a better method to each state what we think about Arts degrees and if he has something to say on the matter, then he would be free to do so. It's a shame that the debate has led itself down this vapid path and I'm afraid I'm partially responsible for having it go here (sorry...). But! To be fair, I wanted this matter to be peripheral to what I said later in that same post, which is what I find interesting to talk about:

Furthermore, a big 'duh', to the idea that degrees which are career specific or are in skill shortage areas will lead to a higher likelihood of employment than degrees which are not. But, it's important to understand that there are other outcomes in doing a degree than those that are employment specific. I remember one of the first speeches given to me and my Artsy cohort was in terms of career outcomes, 'it doesn't matter'. We were assured that we would get a job in the end, but more importantly, we were assured a good education. But, if you measure success in life in terms of employment, then you should not be disappointed with the outcomes one is provided by Arts. Arts students can expect jobs if they are good at what they do and if they can demonstrate the passion for what they do. If they can't, then they shouldn't have done Arts in the first place. In any case, just having a university degree can get you to a lot of places.

Often people pull out the figures in saying that Arts students have a lower employment rate than those of other degrees. This is probably quite true. However, many people also ignore the fact that 'Arts is the degree you do when you don't know what degree to do.' As a result, some graduates still aren't sure what to do, and are less motivated than other graduates. If you aren't a motivated person, it's much easier to do a career specific degree because the career path is easy and obvious. Those doing an Arts degree who want a job have to be reflective in regard to what they'd like to do with their lives and must be motivated. I would say that Arts might actually be the worst degree to do if you don't know what to do.

And later:

This 'anti-arts' thing is extremely peripheral (perhaps in the end, irrelevant?) to the point I was making.

What really counts is getting back to the original substance of all this. What are the reasons for being 'pro' arts? What are the reasons for being 'anti' arts? When you stack them together, which is the best? Or it it better to be apathetic if it doesn't concern you? I clearly think 'pro-arts' is best, but I'm insanely biased - just like everyone on this board. I think that learning for learning's sake is a great thing one can do for themselves and that the act of following the path that interests one is probably the best one can hope for in terms of total quality of life (and this includes satisfaction with life in general as well as employment outcomes). In this instance, I'm not just pro-Arts, I'm pro-education that leads one to the place one wants to be (as much as an education is actually able to do this - obviously other factors like personal ability need to be taken into account and this shouldn't be ignored). I think, and I don't think many people would dispute me on this, one should be able to choose the degree they want to do (and I recognise that the issue of taxpayers subsidising this education also comes into play here, which is really where Brendan has an opinion on the matter, I would say).

[excal]

oh yes, the NOBLE brendan, who informs the masses... who informs us of arts employment figures in MUCH higher numbers than any other field including his own

So?

[costargh]

This whole thing has been blown out of proportion by people obviously too insecure in their own interests to ignore the selective facts that Brendan has posted. Write a bloody letter to the editor if you have a problem about the articles, don't complain about the person posting it!

[excal]

This whole thing has been blown out of proportion by people obviously too insecure in their own interests to ignore the selective facts that Brendan has posted. Write a bloody letter to the editor if you have a problem about the articles, don't complain about the person posting it!

+1

[hard]

I can sympathize with both sides imo. On one hand, it can be said that brenden is just trying to degrade the arts not by what he says, but by the constant posting of articles that show the negative side of the arts.
On the other hand, brenden is just the messenger and is just brining out the statistics.

My opinion, who cares. I can stay up all night trying to look up articles that degrade dentistry, law, economics, engineering etc etc but really it comes to the individual. If you're passionate about something forgot what some article/s has to say and think like an individual. Brenden may seem to be trolling or what not but i say if you disagree with his posts than ignore them or take action that will make a change, not posting your opinion on a FORUM.

[Odette.]

This whole thing has been blown out of proportion by people obviously too insecure in their own interests to ignore the selective facts that Brendan has posted. Write a bloody letter to the editor if you have a problem about the articles, don't complain about the person posting it!

+1

+1 hehe ^_^

[BA22]

degrade dentistry

I can help there

Highest suicide rate of any profession

Not a good employment outcome at all