I am devastated for the kids at school right now with a passion for learning about people, society and history, who want to study these things at university.
I was one of those kids and was lucky enough to have the opportunity to follow my passions through an arts degree.
But the Federal Government is telling these kids that their passions and skills are irrelevant and unimportant, and if they choose to follow their dreams of studying humanities they will be sentenced to a lifetime of debt.
As someone with an arts degree I want to say that choosing to study social sciences at university was the best decision I ever made, and my arts degree taught me so many skills that are more important in today’s world than ever.
My arts degree in sociology taught me how to think critically about every piece of information I come across and to think critically about the world at large.
It taught me how to research and analyse, how to write persuasively, and how to communicate my ideas and arguments to a wide range of people.
My arts degree inspired me to learn about people with different life experiences to my own.
About people from racially and culturally diverse backgrounds, from different socio-economic backgrounds, and from the LGBTQ+ community, just to name a few.
It encouraged me to be more understanding and accepting of people who do not look like me or live like me, and to help others in any way I can.
My arts degree opened doors to so many life and career opportunities I never would have had access to if I’d stayed in my regional town and not pursued an arts degree in Melbourne.
I could have done anything I wanted to do with my arts degree, but currently I’m using it to follow my dreams.
My arts degree has allowed me to study to become a librarian, so I can help future students learn the information literacy skills and critical thinking skills that are more important today than they ever have been before.
Those of us with an arts degree are not superfluous as our government would have us believe.
Our arts degrees allow us to look at the world with a critical eye, and have given us the skills and the knowledge to make a difference, and to make the world a better place.
Laura Sizer attended Guthrie Street Primary School and Goulburn Valley Grammar School before completing a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Sociology at Monash University. She is now studying a Masters of Information Studies with Charles Sturt University.
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