Proposed Macquarie University restructure will ‘hollow out' humanities, academics say

The Guardian

a day ago

Academics have accused Macquarie University of 'hollowing out' the humanities after the institution announced a restructure that would halve some arts faculties and drastically reduce course offerings for some degrees.
Under the proposed changes, seen by Guardian Australia, 42 full-time equivalent academic roles in the Faculty of Arts and 33 in the Faculty of Science and Engineering would be cut, making about $15m in net savings. Curriculum changes would be made in 2026 and 2027, with mergers and reductions largely attributed to low enrolment figures.
The proposal, released to staff on 3 June, said the prospect of international student caps and 'uncertainty' in domestic student growth meant Australian universities could no longer rely on boosting enrolments to ensure financial sustainability.
'The objective of the changes … is to resize the workforce in areas where current staff profile and capacity is not aligned to student demand.'
Staff have less than a month to provide feedback about the cuts. A final decision is expected to be made in early July.
A spokesperson for Macquarie said the proposed curriculum changes were designed to ensure education remained 'transformative' for students.
'The needs of employers and students are evolving and universities, including Macquarie, need to adapt to modern demands,' they said.
'While we are preserving traditional humanities subjects such as history, philosophy, and English literature, we are at the same time offering majors and courses that are focused on employability and meeting areas of student interest and demand.'
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President of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and academic at Macquarie, Dr Alison Barnes, said she had been receiving 'constant calls' from academics worried about changes at their institutions.
More than a dozen universities are undergoing restructuring, including ANU, UTS, Western Sydney University and the University of Wollongong. The NTEU estimated that more than 1,000 roles were on the line, less than five years after more than 17,000 job cuts during the pandemic – or 13% of the workforce.
'Another round of job cuts is extremely damaging to people's wellbeing, they're living with systemic uncertainty,' Barnes said.
'It's also having a corrosive impact on students. They need to be able to study things that they are inherently interested in.'
At Macquarie, ancient history and archaeology, creative arts, politics and international relations and the school of sociology would all lose up to, or more than, half of their FTE staff, while media and communications – which jointly operates the 2SER radio station with the University of Technology, Sydney – would be reduced by about one quarter under the proposed changes.
Majors would also be discontinued in a string of study areas including politics, gender studies and performing arts, while a number of bachelor degrees would be abolished, including music, ancient history and archeology – which would be incorporated into a new bachelor of history. The number of media majors would also be reduced from six to three.
Ten new research positions would be created in science and engineering, and two in education.
Barnes said it 'shocked' her that the humanities was being particularly targeted.
'It's this hollowing out of our institutions. You've got people who've worked their entire lives in these disciplines, and then that knowledge is lost, which is why I think these decisions are so incredibly damaging and shortsighted.
'It's a travesty, and it's heartbreaking.'
Acting president of the Australian Historical Association (AHA), Prof Kate Fullagar, said the cuts were part of the 'ongoing devaluation' of humanities at Macquarie and most Australian universities.
'What we're most concerned about is the reduction in unit offerings and staff – ancient history has been massively depleted, and that sector was clearly the best in the country,' she said.
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'It took Macquarie 40 or 50 years to build up … it's the university's own investment that they're undermining, and it just seems like recklessness.
'Inevitably, what will happen is that with less offerings and less choices for the students, numbers go down, and then you get into this horrible cycle where they cut you further.'
In an email sent to Macquarie students on 3 June, the deputy vice-chancellor (academic), Prof Rorden Wilkinson, said students may notice a 'more focused structure' to their course, major or units from 2026.
'The units you choose from will be based on the best education offerings in each faculty,' he wrote. 'Your study choices will be clearer. The curriculum you study will be more purposeful. Your pathway to graduation will be easier.'
Associate professor in the department of history and archaeology at Macquarie, Paul McKechnie, who has worked at the university for almost 20 years, said it would be challenging to adequately cover teaching with 'so few staff'.
McKechnie said he was 'skeptical' about Macquarie's claims that the cuts were being made because of falling student numbers. A change paper seen by Guardian Australia, which was published by the university and distributed to staff, last year, showed the arts generated $133m in annual profit but cost $48.6m to run.
The vice-chancellor of Macquarie, Prof Bruce Dowton, said universities in Western democracies were facing a 'range of external pressures' and Australia was no exception.
Macquarie has run a deficit for five of the past six years, including a $4m loss in 2024. It cut its workforce in 2020 and 2021 around the time of the Covid-19 pandemic.
'We understand that changes of this nature can be unsettling, and we do not take them lightly,' Dowton said.
'Our community can be assured that we are proposing these changes because they are needed.'
NTEU branch president for Macquarie, and senior lecturer in quantitative sociology, Nicholas Harrigan, said the cuts were a 'disgrace'.
'That is simply stealing from students,' he said.
The spokesperson said the proposed changes were the result of 'careful planning and reflection'. They said teaching overall was 'generally financially sustainable' but that wasn't 'uniformly true'.
'Courses and units with low enrolments are generally more likely to be loss-making after all costs are fully allocated,' they said.
'Strategic realignment allows us to focus on areas of sustainable strength, invest in emerging disciplines, and make choices to safeguard our future.'