The PhD scholarship for a Humanities and Social Sciences student is $20,007, which is below both the industry award stipend (by about $6000) and the poverty line according to an article in today’s The Australian. It seems there’s more to the “starving postgrad student” stereotype than any notion of such students living a life of attending the theatre and drinking caramel lattes at trendy inner suburban cafés.
Yes, you can make the argument that the market for postgraduate degrees fluctuates as demand for such graduates changes and that there’s a supply side issue of the number of places universities are willing to offer but the fact remains that these people are researching and studying (often full time with very little time to work outside the university) to take home a pay packet which is below the poverty line. This isn’t unskilled labour, this is an intellectual marathon. A PhD, even in fields which might be described as “soft” sciences, is an immense amount of work which takes years to complete.
As long as there is society there is a need for people studying the humanities. Fields like gender studies, social psychology, feminist theory, socio-political trends, identity, etc. all have a contribution to make both to society at large and government policy in particular. If we’re going to have an education revolution and work on evidence-based policies, we need strong social sciences departments at universities.
Stuart Cunningham, Professor of Media and Communications at QUT, says that the Rudd government’s focus on maths and science (we’re still yet to see the money and resources) puts the Humanities at risk of not having the resources to educate the professional-managerial workers which are not only in demand but in growing demand. Graeme Hugo, a demographer with the University of Adelaide points out that Arts academia is characterised by an aging population and that many academics are reaching retiring age. Without PhD graduates to take on the research and lecturing load, universities are going to struggle to provide Cunningham’s professional-managerial workers. Quite a quandary indeed.
