With a stronger focus on job-ready training, fields such as history, philosophy and languages are in decline. This shift could limit Australia’s ability to adapt to the AI era while increasing cultural inequality.
Over the past 15 years, enrolments in areas grouped under "society and culture" have fallen by 8%, while creative arts have dropped by 36%. While law and communications remain popular, philosophy, political science and languages are losing thousands of prospective students. In contrast, science, engineering, IT and healthcare have seen significant increases in enrolment, largely due to stronger job demand and affordability.
The Job Ready Graduates policy, introduced in 2020, may be partly responsible. It increased student fees for arts and humanities degrees by up to 120%, raising the cost of a three-year humanities degree to more than $52,000 in student debt. Courses in agriculture, medicine and engineering became notably cheaper. However, these fee increases had little effect on study choices, with only 1.5% of students altering their paths due to cost, according to a 2023 report.
The decline reflects a broader cultural change as universities cut arts programmes to balance budgets. Institutions such as ANU and Macquarie University have dissolved standalone subjects or merged them into broader degrees. This limits student choice and reinforces the idea that humanities offer little value. Experts warn the result could be that arts education becomes limited to wealthier students, turning it into a luxury rather than a public benefit.
Job outcomes for arts graduates are not as poor as often perceived. Government surveys show that nearly 90% of humanities, communications and social sciences graduates secure full-time employment within three years. Employment gaps between them and those in vocational fields such as rehabilitation are steadily decreasing.
This trend is not unique to Australia. Across OECD nations, humanities enrolments have also declined. Even in the United States, where liberal arts have traditionally held cultural significance, numbers have dropped. A key concern is that teenagers are increasingly choosing narrow, familiar career paths. An OECD report found the top job aspirations of 15-year-olds have remained unchanged for over a decade, often failing to align with future workforce demands.
More than a funding problem, the decline reflects a mood shift across culture. Experts argue that messaging from schools, governments and universities has undermined faith in arts education. If these courses continue to disappear, society risks losing essential skills such as critical thinking, empathy and ethical reasoning that are nurtured through studying literature, languages and philosophy. These are qualities that remain difficult to automate, even in a technology-oriented world.
