Humanities in the hands of informed citizens

In the vocation v philosophy wars, we could do worse than look to the US system.

MARTHA Nussbaum's book Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, first published last year, is a call to arms to defend the role of the humanities in universities. She is a professor of philosophy at Chicago University, and has been in Australia as a guest of the University of NSW and to do a spot of bushwalking in the Gold Coast hinterland.

The central thesis of Nussbaum's argument is that democratic societies must protect their humanities departments from slippage: a decline in funding, prioritisation and regard within universities.

Of all the developed world nations wrestling with a funding crisis threatening liberal arts education, Australia is right up there. Because our economy is so driven by the growth in the resources sector, and because we are a nation with a small population but a vast geographical area, vocational needs often take priority over the educational benefits of teaching students how to think.

There are some positive responses to this problem within our system. Melbourne University has moved to a US-style system of generalist undergraduate education before students get the option of specialising in areas such as law, medicine or engineering. My own university is moving in a similar direction next year. And institutions such as UNSW have sought to broaden the education of their students with general studies-style subjects which take them out of their vocational comfort zone, requiring them to complete courses in other faculties. One of the points Nussbaum makes in her book is that the elite US universities aren't doing too badly compared with the sector elsewhere, domestically and abroad.

So Australian universities could do worse than copy what those US institutions do.

And while there are positives in this country, there is comparatively more to be concerned about.

Even at the universities adopting the US-style undergraduate generalist degree system, we don't have the philanthropic donations streaming in to our universities that elite overseas unis do. This means that humanities departments are expected to teach more widely without the extra funding they need to keep class sizes down (crucial to the Socratic method, for example) and to free up their academics to research as well as teach.

And the curse of departments merging for managerial reasons, which Nussbaum writes about in her book - quashing the specific scholarly reasoning for their separations in the first place - is something every Australian university has had to face up to in recent years.

It's a big call to claim the very tenants of democratic polities come under threat when humanities departments lose their status in our elite educational institutions, but it is a fair comment. Democracy does not automatically equate with capitalism. One is about divesting power through institutions that represent and reflect the people. The other is a system of finance, albeit one that can thrive within democratic governmental structures.

But if the needs of the capitalist system are serviced at the expense of what underpins our democracies - for example with a vocational educational focus over philosophical teachings when resources are finite - the participatory culture democracy depends on among citizens is threatened. At a time when people are cynical about our politicians and institutions, this has never been more important.

We need citizens who actively value their freedoms and understand how easily they have been taken away at different points in human history. Teaching that history and what those values are to the leaders of tomorrow is vital, every bit as much as servicing the vocational needs which keep our society operational.

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop professor at the University of Western Australia.