My ice-cold heart was warmed to read in the Australian that for students, and degrees are now market driven, Arts/Humanities degrees are on the way out. The number of students enrolling in humanities degrees in Australia has been declining over the past decade, with disciplines like philosophy, literature, and history seeing significant drops. While university enrolments overall have fallen slightly, humanities have been hit particularly hard, partly due to the Job-Ready Graduates (JRG) funding model, which makes these degrees more expensive compared to others.
Heather Zwicker, leader of the humanities lobby, remains optimistic, arguing that humanities degrees are crucial for social mobility and intellectual development. She emphasizes their adaptability, pointing out that fields like psychology have grown and that humanities skills remain relevant across industries. However, she worries that rising costs will make these degrees inaccessible.
The government, meanwhile, is focusing on alternative pathways like "FEE FREE Uni Ready" and short skills-based courses, challenging the traditional role of humanities as a stepping stone to higher education. With increasing automation and AI tools like ChatGPT reshaping skill demands, critics argue that generic humanities skills may become less valuable in the job market.
In fact, much of the work, to call it that the Arts graduate can do, can now be done quicker and better by AI such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek. The insecurity of employment will thus end the Arts/Humanities degrees. And given the level of woke in those disciplines, and the anti-Western sentiment, it is not a cause for lamentations; these disciplines have long ago ceased to defend Western civilisation, but instead, under the influence of cultural Marxism, have sought to bury the West. Let them die, and the universities with them.
"Australians starting university aren't buying what humanities academics are selling. Their lobby's leader Heather Zwicker, thinks it will work out OK, but there's another problem that really worries her – what arts degrees cost students.
In the decade from 2013, there was a fall in the number of people starting degrees in what used to be the foundations of a liberal education that equipped a university graduate for life, if not any particular job – history, literature, philosophy.
Certainly, university study in general appealed less; the 262,000 undergraduate starts in 2023 was down by 9000 on 2014's. Demography might fix this overall – there is a rise in school leavers this year – but the challenge for the academic establishment in humanities is to rebuild its share.
The classifications individual universities use create anomalies in the national data, but the headline figures from the Department of Education show humanities in a decade of decline.
The number of starting students in the broad "Studies in Human Society" category, which includes the foundations of the humanities, literature and philosophy, history and sociology, dropped 35 per cent between 2013 and 2023, to 7600 first years, (the government will not release last year's numbers for months).
It's way worse for some specific disciplines. There were just under 1000 students starting a degree covering languages and literature in 2023. "Philosophy and Religious Studies" more than halved, to 600 starters.
The headline numbers make a case for critics who complain that humanities degrees are unconnected to the economy, a waste of students' time and public money and that the market has moved on. The previous Coalition government appeared to think so, establishing the Job-Ready Graduates funding model, which varies the contribution undergraduates make to the cost of their course according to government policy objectives. Teachers and foreign languages students pay way less, for example, than people doing degrees in premium price disciplines. This year people studying law, business and humanities will be up for $50,000 in study debt for a three-year degree.
Yet Zwicker, president of the Deans of Arts, Social Science and Humanities, is optimistic about the appeal of what her constituents teach. For a start, numbers bounce around, but on the whole, her disciplines "are preferred to others". In fact there were about 150,000 students in humanities, arts and social science (HASS) courses without a specific vocational pathway in 2023. Vastly more than in law.
Zwicker argues the humanities are the portal to higher education for students from low socio-economic and other disadvantaged backgrounds, the under-represented resource Education Minister Jason Clare warns we will need if Australia is to meet the economy's need for graduates.
Above all, Zwicker believes, really believes, that her disciplines are our intellectual operating system, "we are the connecting tissue between knowledge and society". As to employability, while she does not say HASS has an embarrassment of riches in employment outcomes, she argues graduates succeed all over the economy. For example, psychology has boomed across 10 years, with starting enrolments increasing from 11,150 to 21,000 a year. "People who study psychology don't all become psychologists, they take and adapt it," she says.
Plus, she argues, degrees are always updating, and she has no time for academics whose response to declining demand are what she calls eight very dangerous words: "we just need to tell our story better".
"All disciplines change and adapt all the time. There are fewer people studying continental philosophy and more studying bioethics," she says.
The danger, she fears, is not humanities failing in the marketplace but being priced out of business by the job-ready graduates cost model, still in place under Labor. There was much wishing and hoping that an end to JRG would be in December's mid-year economic forecast announcement. It wasn't. In fact it was not addressed at all, beyond Clare mentioning funding for the new Australian Tertiary Education Commission, which will "provide independent advice to government on higher education pricing matters". New funding models for undergraduate students won't start across the system in 2027.
But while the general argument against discriminatory fees is that hitting humanities and social science courses is anti-intellectual prejudice from culture-warring conservatives, Zwicker makes her case on policy – in particular Clare's determination to expand the number of graduates and broaden the social circumstances they come from.
She argues that the humanities are accessible, a good place for young people from the disadvantaged backgrounds who need a start at university where they can learn general skills. It's a strong case for expanding higher education. The problem is Clare has a shorter alternative to a degree. Universities have long provided study-preparation courses for people whose home and school experiences make university inexplicable at first. The government will fund 30,000 students a year by 2030 in what it calls FEE FREE Uni Ready. "These courses act as a bridge between school or work and university, helping to ensure more Australians get a crack at university and succeed when they get there," he says.
Plus the government has decided to make higher education certificates permanent – short skills-based courses, created during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic – basically to give people something constructive to do during lockdown. The four-unit programs cover all sorts of occupational skills and include how to succeed at university, "get you up to speed and ensure you're familiar with the expectations of university learning," is the Charles Sturt University sell.
They all challenge the case for humanities degrees as providing starter skills, certainly when academics teach the same subjects they always have. A decade of statistics show subjects in the humanities and social sciences still sell – especially if they interest young people and are seen as job-linked. And the decline of others is not all academics' fault – as the university system expanded, so did the range of courses, increasingly tied to career qualifications.
But the old academic culture of researching, teaching and learning knowledge because it intrinsically matters ended when Australians bought the idea of education as delivering social mobility. It will also be harder for humanities teachers to keep selling courses as a way to prepare people for careers across the economy as generic skills are automated. As Opposition Deputy Leader Susan Ley puts it, "in a world where ChatGPT can pen an essay or a business plan in seconds, skills are fast becoming the most precious commodity in our economy. Our schools are leaving too much potential untapped."