Is pursuing an arts degree worth it anymore?

An arts degree will cost over 50,000 Australian dollars (US$32,508) starting in 2025.

This puts it far ahead in cost compared to degrees in teaching, maths, and agriculture – AU$38,000 (US$24,705) more, to be precise.

The biggest problem of it all? The AU$50,000 fee is the amount paid by domestic Australian students – international students can brace for an even bigger sum.

It’s looking like there’s going to be more cons than pros when deciding to pursue an arts degree, regardless of where you are in the world. Source: AFP

The hefty price of an arts degree 

In 2025, international students pursuing a three-year Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne, the country’s number one ranking university on the QS World University Rankings 2025, will pay between AU$100,868 and AU$168,170 (US$65,579 and US$109,336) in fees.

The year before, in 2024, the highest possible fee they had to pay was AU$141,504 (US$91,999).

Over at the Univesity of Tasmania, the three-year Bachelor of Arts degree costs approximately AU$107,973 (US$69,752) in 2025; at Edith Cowan University, their Bachelor of Arts Honours degree costs about AU$37,700 (US$24,355) for the first year, and totals around AU$113,100 (US$73,065) for the entire programme.

That’s not even counting the other expenses associated with studying abroad, such as the exorbitant visa fees, bank-breaking accommodation fees, and high cost of living.

One thing to note, however, is that an arts degree in Australia might differ a little from your typical arts degree elsewhere.

In the Land Down Under, the Bachelor of Arts degree covers a range of humanities and social sciences disciplines. This can include topics from anthropology to Arabic studies, screen and culture studies to sociology.

In other places worldwide, programmes are often divided into the Bachelor of Arts (BA) or the Bachelor of Science (BS).

A university could offer a BA and BS degree for the same subject — like the University of Essex with Economics or the University of Birmingham with Geography.

In the same example, an Economics degree would grant you a Bachelor of Economics in Australia, while in the UK — and elsewhere — you’d get a Bachelor of Arts in Economics or a Bachelor of Science in Economics.

In the case of Australia, an arts degree doesn’t cover what we might regularly think of as art, such as the creative, performing, and visual arts — those fall under different degrees, like the Bachelor of Music, Bachelor of Theatre, and so forth.

It will then come as no surprise that those hoping to earn their arts degree will look to other countries for their studies.

In Canada, the average three-year undergraduate humanities programme costs AU$18,084 (US$11,757) for local students. So international students won’t have to worry about their fees – though there are other things to worry about.

Meanwhile, some countries and their universities even offer programmes for free – though that could come with a catch, like learning the country’s official language, for example, which isn’t too bad of a deal. 

Still, it begs the question: why is it going to be so costly to earn an arts degree in Australia?

The Sydney Opera House is illuminated with projections and lights at the start of the annual Vivid Sydney festival in Sydney in 2024. Source: AFP

There is a ‘right’ degree, and arts isn’t one of them

A big reason for this increase in cost is that Australia – more specifically, the Morrison government, led by then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison of the Liberal Party of Australia – wants to encourage students to pursue areas of skill shortage.

This is part of the Job-ready Graduates package, where the government invests in higher education in areas of national priority to help Australian universities deliver the best results for students, industry, and the community.

This means making an arts degree more expensive and less accessible so that students choose degrees and careers that better benefit Australia as a whole.

The degrees in question? STEM, education, and nursing.

Fees for education and nursing degrees have been reduced by up to 42%, while tuition for mathematics and agriculture programmes has dropped by 59%, so if you’re still aiming to study abroad in Australia, these are the degrees you want to be looking into. 

An uphill battle for those with art degrees

As if struggling to pay for your arts degree isn’t enough, the battle ahead is equally — if not more — demoralising, as long as you have a “Bachelor of Arts” on your graduation certificate. 

In the more traditional arts scene, a 2024 report from the UK found a distinct overrepresentation in the arts for those from the most affluent backgrounds, otherwise known as the upper middle-class, rather than those from working-class backgrounds.

Research by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre found that only 8.4% of people working in film, TV, video, radio and photography identify as being from a working-class background.

The number makes sense, especially when you take into account that reports show how 58% of classical musicians attended an arts specialist university or conservatoire, and one in four attended the Royal Academy of Music for undergraduate study.

Take that a step further and you have 43% of Britain’s best-selling classical musicians and 35% of the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA)-nominated actors being alumni of private schools. 

Unsurprisingly, even athletes face the same problem; one in three of the 2024 Team Great Britain Olympians attended private schools, further establishing the divide where the rich get richer, and the poor stay poor.

And even if you get into the right school and earn the best arts degree possible, there is still no guarantee of a job.

In China, the most common graduate job postings in the first half of 2023 were those in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, reports recruitment platform Liepin. These jobs had high starting salaries, averaging around 330,200 yuan (US$45,415) annually.

Meanwhile, careers that don’t require science degrees reported annual salaries of around 80,000 yuan (US$11,003), reports education analysis platform Xinchou.com.

The lack of career prospects has led to students opting for more stable and “future-proof” degrees. This, in turn, has led to the removal of majors from universities due to poor enrolment rates; in April 2023, public administration was withdrawn by 23 universities and marketing by 22.

In the US, the more traditional art schools and institutes have been fighting falling enrolment rates.

Philadelphia’s University of the Arts has closed its doors, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts will cease its degree-granting programmes at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year.