The earnings of Arts graduates

[brendan]

round and round and round we go, where we'll stop nobody knows .... x_x

I was about to say: "not this again..."

Go on then, why are the articles "anti-Arts".

[AppleThief]

round and round and round we go, where we'll stop nobody knows .... x_x

I was about to say: "not this again..."

Go on then, why are the articles "anti-Arts".

Wow, you demand answers when you evade most questions aimed at you in this thread?

[ninwa]

round and round and round we go ...

[brendan]

You constantly claim that these articles are somehow "anti-Arts". How are they anti-arts? This question is addressed to anyone who has described my articles as being "anti-Arts"

[enwiabe]

Brendan, let me ask you this question. Answer honestly, and don't dodge it with "this is irrelevant".

Are you anti-arts? If not, do you harbour negative views of the Arts degree?

[enwiabe]

And his silence says it all.

[brendan]

Brendan, let me ask you this question. Answer honestly, and don't dodge it with "this is irrelevant".

Are you anti-arts? If not, do you harbour negative views of the Arts degree?

Why are you asking? I thought you were so sure. Is it because you have absolutely nothing concrete from my own words to support your accusation that I am “anti-Arts”?

Let me ask you a question, why do you keep discussing the person rather than the topic? Is to distract people from the actual topic? Does it annoy you that a person can simply relay a message, but you got nothing to attack because they are cold hard statistics, so you choose to make baseless personal attacks against the messenger instead?

For the record:
I am not "anti-Arts" and nor am I "pro-Arts", however defined.
I do not agree with what seems to be a popular argument these days (particularly amongst amongst student unions) that the taxpayer should be paying for Arts degrees.

[ninwa]

Do you disagree that the taxpayer should be paying for any degree?

[enwiabe]

But you have the right to edit which statistics make it to this board. So, how are we to know that these ARE the "cold hard statistics" when you've lifted them from potentially thousands more that exist in cyberspace? Thus, we must be critical of the background from which you come.

If your background is that of anti-arts, as it most certainly is (the only reason why I asked you was to get a confession out of you , then we must be weary of the editing process taken to give us these statistics.

Thanks for confirming what I already knew. Your resentment of taxpayer funding of the Arts degree leads you to post up any and all articles that show the Arts degrees not contributing to the economy or less so than they "should". That is the aim of the articles that you are posting up. Now that you've admitted this, it's all good. You can have your resentment, and I know what position this resentment is coming from, Bitter Brendan.

[brendan]

You could have disputed the statistics, but you choose not to. Instead you show your complete inability to discuss the topic, rather than the person.

[enwiabe]

I could have, but I'd rather just do everyone a public service and tell the VN users from what position these statistics are being fed to them

[brendan]

Do you disagree that the taxpayer should be paying for any degree?

When it comes to the cost of higher education, there is no free lunch.

A government can not give without also taking:


Someone, somewhere has to pay. The only question is: who?
On that question, I do not think the non-users of higher education should be forced to pay for those that do use it. In addition, once you think about the kind of people that attend university, and the kind of people that don’t, taxpayer subsidies to higher education is awfully regressive. This is not to mention the costs of taxation itself [1] [2].

I could have, but I'd rather just do everyone a public service and tell the VN users from what position these statistics are being fed to them

The sources of the statistics have been provided:

Median starting salaries for bachelor degree graduates aged less than 25 and in first full-time employment, by fields of education 2007. Source: http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/content/view/full/24

$68,000      Dentistry
$56,500      Optometry
$51,000      Medicine
$50,000      Earth Sciences
$50,000      Engineering
$46,000      Education
$46,000      Mathematics
$45,000      Law
$44,000      Social Work
$43,200      Computer Science
$43,000      Paramedical Studies
$42,900      Physical Sciences
$42,000      Psychology
$41,000      Biological Sciences
$40,000      Accounting
$40,000      Agricultural Science
$40,000      Architecture & Building
$40,000      Economics, Business
$40,000      Veterinary Science
$39,400      Social Sciences
$38,000      Humanities
$35,000      Art & Design
$34,000      Pharmacy (pre-reg)

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.


NB: You can check out Andrew Norton's blog here: http://andrewnorton.info/
He is a Research Fellow with The Centre for Independent Studies, the editor of their Policy magazine, and the Policy and Government Relations Adviser to the Vice Chancellor (Glyn Davis) at The University of Melbourne.

[bucket]

Lol man, who cares!
If these degrees really are as 'useless' as some statistics may indicate then the arts students will get what is coming, and you will "win" Brendan.
If they aren't, then you art students will gain fulfilling careers and live happy lives, and then you'll think back and be all like "hah Brendan was a jerk" and there you go, you win.

If anything I know for sure right at this point, it's that this thread is a waste of time . And those signatures are annoying to the eyes =_=.

[brendan]

those signatures are annoying to the eyes =_=.

I disabled all signatures long ago. Much easier to read the threads that way.
Maybe for the fun of it i should put all these stats on my sig, given what everyone else is doing.

[enwiabe]

Yeah, that would complete the picture of your trolling.

Ah, good ole' trolly mctroll troll