Arts and humanities enrolments are flagging in Australia, and looming changes to funding arrangements are likely to make the situation worse, according to Monash University policy expert Andrew Norton.

Data compiled by Norton reveal that take-up of degrees in the humanities, arts and social sciences started to decline early last decade. The falloff accelerated this decade, after tuition fees for arts subjects were more than doubled under the Job-ready Graduates (JRG) reforms.

Norton said broader factors ¨C including the ubiquity of smartphones, which robbed teenagers of time and attention span ¨C were likely to have dampened interest in the humanities. He said high school reading scores had been edging downwards for over a decade. In New South Wales, senior school enrolments had declined in advanced English and fallen sharply in history and foreign languages.

But arts enrolments at university level have been somewhat insulated by funding arrangements that allow universities to admit unsubsidised students. Teaching grants are capped to a ¡°maximum basic grant amount¡± (MBGA) threshold, but universities can pocket tuition fees from additional students.

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These settings incentivise universities to maximise their enrolments in arts ¨C along with business and law ¨C because tuition fees in these fields are currently A$16,992 (?8,330) per student, compared to government subsidies of just A$1,286.

Over-enrolling students in these disciplines is ¡°quite attractive¡±, Norton told a Sydney conference of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. ¡°You can¡­effectively take as many as you¡¯ve got physical capacity [for], and you¡¯ll still get more than 90 per cent of the potential funding for those students.¡±

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However, the arrangements are set to change next year. The dollar-based MGBA will be replaced by quotas of student places, beyond which universities will not be allowed to accept fees, to discourage large universities from absorbing students at smaller institutions¡¯ expense.

This means there will be a ¡°substantially reduced incentive¡± for universities to over-enrol students in arts, business and law, Norton warned.

He said the government¡¯s opposition to over-enrolments appeared to have softened slightly. Large universities would now be allowed to exceed their quotas by 2 per cent next year before relinquishing tuition fee income. Smaller institutions would be allowed an extra 5 per cent.

But from 2027, when the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (Atec) assumes responsibility for allocating student places, quotas would be more strictly enforced. Consequently, many currently over-enrolled universities would need to start reducing their commencing intakes in 2026 to bring their numbers in subsequent years ¡°more in line with what Atec is going to require¡±.

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This would coincide with a 2 or 3 per cent spike in the number of school-leavers seeking admission to university. ¡°Popular metro universities will be pulling back their offers at just the time the demand is increasing,¡± Norton said.

¡°The universities that are going to face a contraction may have been so overenrolled because of their willingness to accept high student contribution students, and [may] have to reduce [admissions] in those fields.¡±

The conference heard that deans were pinning their hopes on a reversal of the JRG fee hike to help rekindle demand for arts and humanities degrees.

Norton said he expected fees to be overhauled so that students in disciplines with the lowest future incomes paid the lowest fees ¨C a situation that had prevailed from 1997 until JRG¡¯s introduction in 2021. But this would not happen until 2027 ¡°at the absolute earliest¡±.

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com