Jane Caro AM is a familiar face in Australian households as an author, columnist, broadcaster, advertising writer, documentary maker and social commentator.

She has written 14 books, won a Walkley Award, an Order of Australia and has been a regular face on The Gruen Transfer on ABC TV.

And it all started with a Bachelor of Arts Degree majoring in English Literature back in 1977.

“It was something I did with the very old-fashioned idea of learning for its own sake. Learning about something that I loved,” she told DASSH.

She was always interested in advertising, but it was learning how to read that made her a great writer.

“I’ve always had a love of words and if you’re going to be a writer, you have to be a reader. So I was a reader.

“I loved Victorian social literature. Those sorts of things get into your bloodstream. It’s kind of subliminal. It’s not reading this book because it will lead to this outcome. It’s much, much more subtle than that.

“The Victorian social novel is about changing the world, about progress, about equality, about why are poor people poor, and why some children are working as chimney sweeps and others aren’t.

“I was studying it because I was interested in it. I do what I do today because I’m interested in it.”

So how does the study of Victorian social literature translate to such a broad ranging and interesting career?

“I was lucky enough to be part of a degree that really asked you to question and think,” Jane says.

“The Victorian social novelists were mostly women, and they were feminists. They might not have understood the term or called themselves that. They were struggling all the time with women’s role in a much more repressed society.

“As we discussed those novels in tutorials and listened to lectures about them we were being taught how to think more deeply about a narrative and what else is going on in the emotional life of the characters.”

Jane didn’t study English Literature with a job in mind, it was more than that.

“An arts degree is a brilliant way of beginning adult life,” she said.

“I would say to young people who think ‘I love that, I find that really fun, but I can’t do it because it doesn’t lead to something’ – don’t worry, just do it, because it will lead you somewhere.

“I think the great thing about an arts degree is that it gives you the time and the space to work out what it is that you really are interested in, that you really want to put a lot of energy into.”

And studying was fun.

“I was a part of a group which produced an ancient history review which was hilarious. Incredibly politically incorrect. Unbelievably popular.

“I met some fantastic people. It was a great period of my life. I really, really enjoyed it.”

The diversity of subjects you can study as part of an arts degree made it a great launchpad for her career.

“Arts degrees cover a great deal more than English Literature and there is a lot of breadth as well as the depth in what you look at.

“If you find something you like because you put your toe in the water there’s always postgraduate if you want to do that, honours, and all sorts of pathways to get to something which might require more focus and be career oriented.

“I did a media and communications elective where we made our own short film. That was really interesting and really fun and I learnt an enormous amount.

“I’m sure that early experience stood me in very good stead when it came to making commercials and I’ve made documentaries now.”

She’s worried about young people being steered away from the Bachelor of Arts.

“A lot of the time kids get funnelled into things when they don’t even know who they are. They haven’t had a chance to think about the world, their place within it, what it means, what they love, what they would like to change.

“I think an arts degree really gives people an opportunity to do that, and the space to do that.”

Jane is passionate about the contribution graduates make to Australian society – and the role education plays in building healthy democracies and empathetic people.

“We’re not worker bees. We’re not just living careers. We live whole lives. And what is really important for a sustainable democracy, which we are now seeing under threat, is well educated citizens.

“I was aiming to be a well-educated citizen,” she says.

“What the Arts and literature teach is how to empathise with others.

“When you read a book, or you listen to a piece of music, or you watch a film, you are asked to go on a journey where you imaginatively possess the body and the experiences of someone completely different from yourself. And that is part of what empathy is.

“So I will finish on that note, if we want a better world, we need more people doing Arts degrees.”