Australia’s higher education system reflects long standing decisions about which forms of knowledge are valued and which are marginalised. It has elevated science as essential, valorised mathematics as difficult (and therefore worthwhile), and positioned technology as the engine of the future. Knowledge that is measurable is granted legitimacy, while knowledge that is unempirical, grounded in interpretation or subjectivity is cast as frivolous.
These hierarchies are embedded early, often beginning in the classroom, where subjects like mathematics are praised as rigorous, while other disciplines are merely tolerated. Students are subtly, or sometimes explicitly, encouraged to pursue educational trajectories that promise economic returns rather than intellectual depth. By the time they reach tertiary education, many students find that the choices available to them have been shaped by structural incentives. Degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are heavily subsidised, signaling continued political investment in what are considered ‘productive’ forms of knowledge. In contrast, the humanities, or other degrees alike, are seen as expensive indulgences, with rising fees reinforcing their perceived marginality.
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has strategically positioned itself in line with national policy priorities that champion technological innovation as a key driver of advancement. A clear example of this alignment is the launch of a specialist Bachelor of Artificial Intelligence, signalling both institutional and governmental commitment to disciplines deemed significant. Australian students are eligible to apply for a Commonwealth Supported Place in this course, underscoring its role as an educational priority.
This logic is mirrored in other structural changes within UTS. In 2025, the university amalgamated the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences with the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, forming the Faculty of Design and Society (FDAS). Although framed as a necessary consolidation, the merger reflects deeper institutional preferences. “Design” retains its disciplinary coherence and cultural capital, while “Society” functions as a residual category encompassing the humanities, social sciences, and communication fields. The ambiguity of this nomenclature has drawn critical reflection from students, some of whom have questioned the symbolic and pedagogical implications of folding diverse fields of inquiry into a single, loosely defined term (me, I am one of these students). The restructuring suggests not a unified intellectual vision, but rather an administrative accommodation shaped by austerity and market logic.
What happened to universities being niche?
This pattern continued into mid-2025 when UTS originally froze enrolments temporarily for nearly a fifth of its courses, placing 120 out of 615 programs on hold. Now, UTS is pursuing a second round of sweeping changes aimed at standardising degrees, cutting nearly a third of its subjects and drastically reducing specialisation and elective options for students. Staff face mass job losses, non-renewal of contracts, as the university asks for ‘voluntary redundancies,’ creating widespread uncertainty and dissatisfaction. These moves risk damaging UTS’s reputation, undermining student choice, and positioning the university as a second-tier provider that relies more on financial efficiency than educational quality. The newest proposals of cuts and mergers also disproportionately impact areas of Science, Health, and Education, raising concerns about the university’s commitment to other critical sectors during periods of workforce shortage. While management continues to frame the changes in the language of efficiency, the reliance on external consultants and the finality of these decisions have intensified disillusionment among staff and students alike. The result is an institutional climate that increasingly operates according to market imperatives.
We are now left with an education system that treats critical inquiry, cultural understanding, and ethical reasoning not as foundational, but as ancillary. History and literature are seen as ornamental, sociology is framed as indulgent, rather than essential. These are the disciplines that equip individuals to interrogate power, question inherited norms, and consider the ethical dimensions of public life, yet they are the most at risk of erosion.
Importantly, these fields are also disproportionately associated with women. The feminisation of these degrees has made it easier to dismiss them, much like how care work is undervalued and underpaid, and emotional labour is ignored because it is not captured in national economic indicators. When knowledge is coded as feminine, its legitimacy is undermined, not due to an absence of intellectual rigour, but because of a lack of alignment with dominant, masculinised conceptions of rationality and utility.
These dichotomies are rarely stated explicitly, rather harshly lodged in the architecture of funding models, reflected in political discourse, and perpetuated in cultural narratives revealing something deeper about the society we are shaping. The privileging of certain disciplines over others tells us who we believe should lead, whose voices are credible, and which forms of intelligence we are prepared to reward.
We are often told that contemporary society is facing a crisis of democracy, that political divisions are intensifying, institutional trust is declining, and public discourse is becoming more brittle. Yet, seldom do we examine the kinds of thinking our institutions encourage or the intellectual dispositions our education system cultivates. The capacity for empathy, for historical understanding, for cultural analysis or deep listening—these are not the traits being nurtured, nor are they the ones being publicly valued.
As the political left gains cultural visibility, we are witnessing a corresponding backlash in which critical theory is positioned as a threat to tradition, gender studies is dismissed as ideological, and decolonial approaches are framed as divisive. The skills that the humanities offer are precisely what many reactionary movements fear; the capacity to illuminate the relationship between past and present and to challenge dominant narratives. These disciplines train students to consider the world not only as it is, but also as it might be otherwise. This capacity to imagine otherwise is threatening to those who benefit from existing arrangements of power, and it is precisely why such degrees are being defunded. A society that evacuates human understanding from its public life may achieve technological or economic growth, but it does so at the cost of social cohesion and ethical depth.
“Society” degrees are not an optional aesthetic flourish. They are infrastructural.
So remember that efficiency is not synonymous with justice, that truth is rarely convenient, and that power must always be examined.
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