Hundreds of university courses within teaching, languages, archaeology and media are among those being slashed as the tertiary sector pushes back against \u201cconfused\u201d government policies.<\/p>\n
Almost half of Australia\u2019s universities have restructured in the past year, leading to the merging or disbanding of more than 50 schools of study and drastic reductions in course options for students, particularly in the humanities.<\/p>\n
The University of Wollongong is cutting a string of disciplines including cultural studies, languages, archaeology and linguistics, while the University of Tasmania will merge its school of humanities and social sciences, combine politics and international relations into a single major, and no longer offer German.<\/p>\n
Southern Cross University is discontinuing undergraduate degrees in contemporary music, art, design and digital media.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n Australian National University, which on Wednesday said it would announce no further involuntary redundancies as part of its \u201cRenew ANU\u201d process, has so far proposed merging or shutting the schools of music, sociology, crime and social justice, political science, international relations and public policy.<\/p>\n It will also close the Australian National Dictionary Centre, the Humanities Research Centre, the Centre for European Studies and the ANU School of Music.<\/p>\n Its vice-chancellor, Prof Genevieve Bell, said the university was facing an \u201cincredibly challenging period\u201d, adding: \u201cLiving outside our means is not a responsible financial position.\u201d<\/p>\n Guardian analysis based on data provided by every university bar the ANU forecasts the total figure of job losses to occur by 2027 at about 2,400 across 15 institutions. About 143,000 people worked in the sector as of 2024, according to the Department of Education \u2013 equating to a cut of about 1.6% of the workforce.<\/p>\n About 847 staff have already been made redundant nationwide, including 218 at the ANU and 259 at the University of Southern Queensland.<\/p>\n The proposed cuts across the sector include up to 400 positions \u2013 or a 10th of the workforce \u2013 at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Last week UTS temporarily paused student enrolments<\/a> for nearly a fifth of its courses in business, design, engineering and IT, health, law and science as it pursued $100m in cost cuts.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n That followed the release in June by Macquarie University of a draft proposal showing 42 full positions in the faculty of arts and 33 in science and engineering would be cut alongside almost 40 mergers and curriculum reductions<\/a>, discontinuing majors in politics, gender studies, media and performing arts.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Macquarie said the proposals were in response to \u201clong-term challenges shaping higher education\u201d and more detail would be made public soon.<\/p>\n The CEO of Universities Australia, Luke Sheehy, said universities were \u201cunderstandably\u201d in a difficult financial position because of a decade of \u201csuccessive and consistent\u201d changes to policy and funding settings<\/a>, with research investment falling to a record low.<\/p>\n \u201cChronic underfunding and confused policy settings are holding universities back,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve called for \u2026 increased funding for research, a fairer student funding system that doesn\u2019t punish students or universities, growth for our international education sector and financial support for campus infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n The University of Newcastle needs to save $20.6m annually while Charles Sturt University (CSU) has announced it will cut its operating budget by $35m by the end of 2027. The exact number of job losses at each institution has not been announced.<\/p>\n \u201cAs distressing as this decision is, it should not come as a surprise,\u201d the vice-chancellor of CSU, Prof Ren\u00e9e Leon, said. \u201cIn recent years, the Australian university sector has been in crisis \u2026 jeopardised by needlessly restrictive and unsupportive government policies<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cCharles Sturt has been hard hit by the loss of international students and has no indication from government that it will receive a fair share.\u201d<\/p>\n The president of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), Dr Alison Barnes, said the cuts would have a \u201cdevastating impact\u201d. She said they followed 4,524 redundancies during 2020 and 2021.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a shortsighted strategy,\u201d Barnes said. \u201cIn almost every case [the cuts] are completely unjustified. No consideration is given to the enormous damage this does to the institutions, the colleagues that are left behind and the student experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Barnes said the fact the federal government recently increased the international student intake for 2026<\/a>, and has flagged that a new funding model<\/a> will be established under the recently commenced Australian Tertiary Education Commission, showed that bad management \u2013 not policy settings \u2013 were driving cuts.<\/p>\n \u201cVice-chancellors [are] taking home an average of $1m a year,\u201d Barnes said. \u201cPoor workforce planning is a symptom of the broken governance structures that unaccountable university leaders operate under.\u201d<\/p>\n The minister for education, Jason Clare, said the federal government would be advised by an expert council on university governance when he meets with his counterparts in October, which would address the remuneration of executives.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, he announced that the commonwealth would strengthen the powers of the tertiary sector\u2019s regulator for the first time since its establishment.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t think that we\u2019ve got challenges with university governance, you\u2019ve been living under a rock,\u201d Clare told an AFR summit on Tuesday.<\/p>\n