Australia’s New Pricing Policy In Higher Education: Fees For STEM Degrees Cut Up To 60%, Humanities Costs 113% More

In a complete overhaul of higher education pricing policy, Australian government will steeply increase the university fees for students of arts and humanities stream and use it to the fund expansion of job-oriented STEM degrees, The Guardian reported.

While agriculture and maths degrees will see a 62 per cent decrease under the new policy, degrees in science, engineering, IT, health and environmental science subjects will now cost 20 per cent less. While humanities will see a whopping 113 per cent increase in fees, degrees in commerce and law will now cost 28 per cent more.

There would be no change in fees for medicine, dental, and veterinary science students.

Under the new fee regime, around 60 per cent of new students will either see a decrease or no changes to their future degrees.

In Australia, graduates from more vocationally-oriented degrees have higher employment rates. For instance those from engineering, education, health, management and commerce and information technology have rates above 75%.

“Universities must teach Australians the skills needed to succeed in the jobs of the future,” education minister, Dan Tehan said. The fee restructuring is being carried out under a policy to produce “job-ready graduates”.

Science, technology, healthcare, education and construction are expected to account for 62 per cent of Job growth over the next 5 years.