Humanities’ cuts pose existential threat to Australia’s capabilities

Editor’s note: The Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH) has released a media statement expressing deep concern over proposed cuts to the humanities and social sciences at the Australian National University (ANU)—including the closure of the Humanities Research Centre (HRC) and other nationally significant humanities programs and infrastructure.

We are reproducing the AAH statement here in full because these cuts – along with those at other Australian universities – pose an existential threat to Australia’s national intellectual and cultural capabilities.

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Australian Academy of the Humanities raises alarm over ANU cuts: a national capability at risk

Now is not the time to reduce our national humanities capabilities. Global unrest, the impact of AI on society, wealth inequality, climate change, distrust in democratic institutions – all call for independent and informed Australian thinking. The humanities help us to understand ourselves and our neighbours, and the changes our times require.

Or shall we let others do our thinking for us?

The proposed closure of vital parts of our national infrastructure at the ANU, including the Humanities Research Centre, the European Studies Centre, the Australian National Dictionary Centre, significant cuts to the School of Music and Australian Dictionary of Biography, and the loss of roles across many areas in the ANU’s College of Arts and Social Sciences represents a loss of significant national capability.  The Humanities Research Centre, which celebrated its 50^th anniversary last year, has brought together scholars from around the country and across the world, being a catalyst for innovative, advanced research across the humanities.

The situation at the ANU, however, echoes cuts to the humanities at many universities around the country (in recent months Macquarie, Wollongong, UTAS and La Trobe to name a few). While individual universities have every right to determine their education and research priorities, the truth is that no one in Australia has a handle on the cumulative effects of cuts and their impact on our national skills and knowledge capabilities; a sovereign risk that neither the government nor the university sector is assessing.

We are calling on the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) to step in, and take a national coordinating role, to work with us to identify the loss of disciplinary expertise and its impact on Australia’s knowledge capability. We know that Australia’s knowledge base for understanding Indonesia, Russia and whole regions such as South Asia is already imperilled by the closure of many programs in these areas. And there are many similar instances of loss around the country, denying future generations opportunities to contribute to Australian society in areas of need. Once lost, expertise that has taken generations to build cannot easily be replaced – and the ramifications for the nation are immediate.

Universities have laid some of the blame for this situation on declining enrolments. These declines, however, have been exacerbated by the Job Ready Graduates (JRG) policy which the Government’s own Universities Accord Report has condemned. The JRG is causing many humanities students to be saddled with decades of debt for degrees that provide them with the analytical, critical and creative thinking skills needed to effectively understand and respond to the many complex issues facing our society. Worse still, the JRG policy is disproportionately impacting women, and low-SES, regional and Indigenous students who are more likely to take subjects in society and culture, as their first degrees in higher education. It is our great disappointment that the Australian Government hasn’t acted sooner to remediate this policy, despite acknowledged experts (including HECS architect Emeritus Prof Bruce Chapman) arguing it was ill conceived and has failed.

The Government has shown real commitment to advanced manufacturing and a “future made in Australia”. The Australian Academy of Humanities repeats its call on the Government to “back Australian thinking”.