Situating Narratives of Decline: Surveying the Literature of Crisis from a Regional Humanities Student Perspective

• Published in: Australian humanities review no. 73; pp. 203 - 218
• Main Authors: Bradshaw, Wayne, Croft, Jade
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bundoora Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) 01.02.2025
• Subjects: Australian literature; Colleges & universities; Creative writing; Decades; Education policy; Higher education; History; Humanities; Students; Undergraduate education; New Zealand; Queensland Australia; Australia; United States > US
• ISSN: 1325-8338; 1325-8338
• DOI: 10.56449/14631928

Bycontrast, I had the benefit of completing my Bachelor of Arts, also majoring in English, at the same regional university in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Over a decade later, conditions facing humanities programs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand have worsened to such an extent that the historical 'crisis' Epstein described in 2012 resembles a relative golden age across the Anglosphere. In 2023, Andrew Norton, Professor of Higher Education Policy at the Australian National University, suggested that '[i]n the late 2000s and early 2010s the humanities shared in general enrolment growth, but after that went into decline' (np). In 2023, Nathan Heller observed that in the United States '[djuring the past decade, the study of English and history at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third' (np), and this was in addition to the reduction by half that Epstein described as occurring between 1972 and 2012.