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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday June 21 2020, @11:53PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Australia's conservative government announced plans Friday to double university fees for humanities students, in a bid to push people into more useful, "job-relevant" courses like maths and science.

Under the proposal—which critics panned as an "ideological assault"—the cost of degrees like history or cultural studies will rise up to 113 percent to around US$29,000, while other courses such as nursing and information technology will become cheaper.

Education Minister Dan Tehan—an arts graduate with two advanced degrees in international relations—said the government wanted to corral young people towards "jobs of the future" to boost the country's economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

"If you are wanting to do philosophy, which will be great for your critical thinking, also think about doing IT," Tehan said.

The plan would help pay for an additional 39,000 university places by 2023 and for cost cuts for courses like science, agriculture, maths and languages.

[...] "I'm an arts graduate and so is the minister for education so I'm not sure you can draw the conclusion that we're completely unemployable," said opposition lawmaker Tanya Plibersek.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Monday June 22 2020, @02:16AM (6 children)

    by driverless (4770) on Monday June 22 2020, @02:16AM (#1010890)

    They tried that bollocks here and it backfired badly and quite predictably: If you're $ethnic you need a B- to get into med school, if you're not you need an A+. So a pile of people who could never make it through med school were admitted based solely on their race and promptly failed the course, leaving them with significant debt and nothing to show for it. It only took the people who proposed this a couple of years of this happening over and over again to figure out that it wasn't a good idea. Their next approach was to suggest that there be two passing grades to get a medical degree, a lower one for $ethnic and another one for everyone else. Again, the outcome of this was easy to see, no-one would trust a $ethnic doctor any more because they'd assume they failed the course but got in anyway because of their race. Even already-qualified $ethnic doctors spoke out against it, and in the end it was dropped.

    "Affirmative action" is fine for some things, but when you're evaluating people for things that really matter, doctors, engineers, technicians, etc, it needs to be purely merit-based.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @03:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @03:32AM (#1010935)

    And that's where it's heading again.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @06:16AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @06:16AM (#1011000)

    "Affirmative action" is now a tail wagging the dog. It was supposed to temporarily correct for injustices that existed before affirmative action was put into place, but it will never accomplish its stated goal now because it is treating symptoms, not causes. When people tell young black kids that they will never make it, they do not take school seriously, they bully kids that do, and when they become adults, they create a pattern of disproportionately low representation in the workforce, especially positions that require higher education. As long as this happens, no amount of affirmative action will fix things. In fact, it undermines the credibility of anyone who advocates for fair treatment. For some reason, fixing the causes of social imbalances has been made taboo by the left. Maybe because it discredits some of their cherished ideas.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday June 22 2020, @01:25PM (2 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday June 22 2020, @01:25PM (#1011075) Journal

      I'm not sure where that last sentence comes from, as I am left (by US standards; by civilized world standards I am a boring old centrist...you know, like that Sanders guy?) and definitely in favor of fixing the underlying issues. More than once I've compared affirmative action to a bandage for a tumor, with the rider that while a bandage is better than nothing, it doesn't cure the cancer, and any doctor who thinks a bandage is a cancer cure is a quack. AA has become pseudo-liberal white-guilt bullshit.

      MLK Jr. warned about this, in a more general form, when he stated that the "white moderate" was in some ways a worse enemy than a direct racist, that the "negative peace" they were looking for was inherently selfish and had nothing to do with actual racial justice.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @05:18PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @05:18PM (#1011169)

        It wasn't MLK... it was Malcolm X

        • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @11:49PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @11:49PM (#1011309)

          I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

          I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

          MLK, Letter from a Birmingham Jail

    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @07:51PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @07:51PM (#1011217)

      It's not "people telling black kids they'll never make it." Maybe in the past teachers may have done, that but not anymore. Now, they are coddled and the whole class is held back for them. It's their own goddamn people who tell them that learning is being an Uncle Tom. It's their inferior culture and intellect that holds them back. The ones that succeed are the ones who are smart enough to realize that White culture is superior, in this respect at least, and adopt it, despite the flak they catch from their own.

      Are you really so ignorant, or you just prefer the anti-white lie?