26 Oct 2016

Beloved half-man and political genius, Tyrion Lannister, once said, “Everyone who makes a joke about a dwarf’s height thinks he’s the only person ever to make a joke about a dwarf’s height.” Really, they’re just recycling the same few jokes. The same can be said about those of you who make jokes about arts students.

Yes, I don’t do anything in my course but sit around talking about my feelings. Yes, my subjects are an absolute wank. Yes, I’m essentially a fancy homeless person when it’s all over. And yes, I’m going to work at Maccas when I graduate. Anything else that I haven’t heard before?

There’s a certain stigma around studying something under an arts and social science faculty that isn’t really all that deserved. For one, arts and humanities cover a wide range of subjects. Teaching, politics, criminology–everyone has this image of philosophy students sitting around pondering for days on end, or history students figuring out the chain of events that led to them being completely fcked. Maybe we are a little spacier, perhaps even more free spirited… but why does that mean we’re all automatically hopeless causes in the job market?

In a 2013 UK study, it was found that students with a degree in social science (ahem… arts and humanities department) were found to have a higher chance of having full-time employment compared to science students (thank you very much). The study indicated that 84.2% of social science graduates were in a full-time job roughly three years after graduating, whereas this was only 78% in science, technology, engineering and maths graduates. Yet another misconception is the limited applications of an arts and humanities degrees. History graduates, for example, are now being hired by finance and economic firms for analysis work. Why? Critical thinking, a skill honed to its finest in degrees like these.

In other smug news, the so-called respectable degrees of business and law are currently facing market saturation. With so many elites competing in a Darwin-esque race, the majority of those who find work are at the absolute top of their game (or you know… nepotism, but that’s a whole other article), while the other will simply be. Sadly, some will be unable to pay the on-going and undoubtedly pricey rent of their ivory towers.

The bigger issue behind this is the cognitive dissonance behind people prasing such great artistic feats as the architecture of the Sydney Opera House, the paintings of Van Gough, and the novels of Dickens, but then turning around and sh*tting on artists in the making. How can you value culture so highly with such unwavering respect, but sneer at the process of its creation? This is so much so an issue that suddenly, even the government is cutting funding and loan availabilities to art students from January 1, 2017 (cheers Simon Birmingham). This is after the 2014 report released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics with figures that indicated, clear as day, the arts had generated $84 billion to the Australian economy that year–more than the transport and welfare sectors.

While it’s all well and good to reduce the livelihood for arts and humanity students for a joke every now and then, know that this whole shtick is getting old. So we do have an easier time getting through our course, and yes, it’s hard at times to see the tangible results, but know this: we aren’t just doing nothing. And hey, you should always be nice to those who handle your food anyways. You know, just in case.

by Garry Lu