Macquarie University announces plans to axe Sociology and cut jobs and courses in other humanities and social science disciplines
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Issued by: Academics for Public Universities, July 10th, 2025
Macquarie University announces plans to axe Sociology and cut jobs and courses in other humanities and social science disciplines
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – The management of Macquarie University has announced plans to axe its Sociology major – one of Australia’s best sociology programs – citing “declining demand” as the justification. Academics within the discipline cite figures to the contrary that indicate Sociology enrolments are strong and rising. They also contend that discipline enrolments match or exceed other disciplines in the Arts faculty that have been spared from cuts.
Under the change proposal circulated to staff for consultation, the major in Politics will also be cut along with four academic positions, while job losses are also slated in other disciplines including Ancient History, Education, and Modern Languages.
Academics for Public Universities (APU) stand with our colleagues at Macquarie University to oppose these cuts. In doing so we also wish to draw public attention to the fact that similar cuts to humanities, social science and critical disciplines in general are being made at universities across the country. These disciplines are crucial for maintaining the health of our democracy and the country’s knowledge base. Public universities that offer a broad range of subjects and disciplinary offerings are a public good and it is in the public interest to support them.
Along with academic colleagues at more than fourteen of Australia’s public universities, APU have been documenting and attempting to raise public awareness about these and other critical issues currently facing higher education in Australia, and the repeated failure of state and federal governments to adequately acknowledge their obligations to intervene.
The targeting for downsizing and ‘disestablishment’ of university disciplines that encourage critical and contextual thinking and forms of research by university managers, without accountability or public oversight, has been continuing now for well over a decade. However, blatant efforts to completely eliminate whole disciplines en masse is a recent phenomenon.
But whether these cuts are justified by supposed shortfalls in international student fees or some other dubious reason, the cuts proposed at Macquarie demonstrate a lack of university governance in line with the mission of a public university. It is therefore legitimate to ask at a time when all of these disciplines are arguably more important for students to be studying than ever before, how is it that we have come to a point whereby the leadership of a publicly funded Australian university can dismantle vital areas of scholarship with no accountability, no transparency, and no public mandate?
We submit that this is an attack not just on Sociology and Politics, but on the very idea of a public university. Sociology and Politics teach students to understand power, inequality, and the ways that our institutions function and respond to social change. Should we be chastised for assuming that this is precisely why they are being targeted?
Despite waves of petitions, student protests, and staff opposition at universities throughout the country, university executives and their management appear immune to critique. The lack of adequate democratic oversight of their decision-making authority has been a major focus of APU’s policy analyses. We argue that corporate governance, management and financial structures imposed on universities by successive Australian governments have precipitated a series of unresolved crises in Australian higher education. While public universities continue to be increasingly run like corporations, and their executive teams make decisions behind closed doors, protected by politicised governance structures, questions about whether they are fulfilling their statutory obligations and social functions will remain unaddressed.
The Australian public deserves to know:
Who is holding university managers accountable? Why are politicians silent while critical disciplines are being gutted? And why are journalists seemingly unwilling to demand more answers?
We urge our journalist colleagues to help defend academic and intellectual inquiry at one of the country’s top universities. In order to do so you will need to dig deeper than press statements and take the time to investigate the links between university governance and political inaction. While public higher education is being quietly dismantled, the disciplines which enable us to critically understand how the world works are being targeted. Current efforts to gut Sociology, Politics and other critical disciplines at Macquarie are a taste of what is clearly being contemplated by other university executives.
We urge media outlets, political leaders, and members of the public to question Macquarie University management about their proposal to gut its humanities and social science offerings and pressure it to properly justify that proposal or withdraw it.
Petition: https://www.megaphone.org.au/petitions/save-sociology-at-macquarie-university
Contact for media enquiries: academicsforpublicuniversities@gmail.com