History as a subject taught in Australian schools and universities is facing an existential crisis. Fewer students are choosing to study it, leading to history department closures and job losses for academics.

It also points to a looming national identity crisis. A sense of belonging is rooted in understanding where you come from. Increasingly, Australians are finishing school without a grasp of, or interest in their own national story, the broader history of Western Civilisation, or the cultural values and institutions that shaped them.

The decline of history departments does not just mean fewer jobs for scholars, but the loss of intellectual capital and the ability to pass those stories down.

The problem starts at schools. Nowhere is the crisis more evident than in the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Australian History course for Years 11 and 12, which has collapsed. Over eight years, the number of students studying the country’s history more than halved – from 1,245 in 2014 to just 487 in 2022. Despite an overhaul of the program and the implementation of a new syllabus in 2022, a reversal of this downward trend appears unlikely.

Meanwhile, in the tertiary sector, enrolments in history degrees are plummeting, and this has had a downstream effect on history departments. As Nick Bryant reported in The Age, since 2017 there has been a 10 to 20 per cent decline in the number of history staff positions at Australian universities. Today, there are 30 to 40 per cent fewer academics in Australian history than there were 35 years ago – despite the massive expansion of the tertiary sector more broadly.

Those who pursue postgraduate studies in history are the future of the discipline. Yet the number of up-and-coming historians has also dropped off a cliff, with a 45 per cent reduction in the number of postgraduate history candidates. Australian universities are drawing from an ever-shrinking pool.

Perhaps this should come as no surprise. Research published by the IPA’s Dr Bella d’Abrera has shown that history courses in Australia have become increasingly preoccupied with postmodern theory.

The landmark 2022 audit found university history departments teach more about ‘race’ than ‘democracy’ (86 subjects compared to 33), more on ‘identity’ than the ‘Enlightenment’ (64 compared to 25), and more on ‘sexuality’ than the ‘Reformation’ (54 compared to 17). As Dr d’Abrera said, ‘History, as a discipline taught in Australian universities, is no longer about a study of the past; it has turned into a woke political project to erase our memory.’

Yet history – and Australian history in particular – was not always a sidelined discipline. In the late 20th Century, Professor Geoffrey Blainey published The Tyranny of Distance and Manning Clark wrote his multi-volume history of Australia. It was only later during the history wars that the ‘whitewashed’ view of history clashed with the ‘black armband’ – marking a new era in which history was increasingly taught through the prism of class, race and gender. The black armband view of Australian history emphasised incidents of racism, violence and exploitation and became popular in academic circles. History devolved into ideological warfare, and this continues to impact the courses on offer today.

Universities used to be the custodians of knowledge. They played a vital role in preserving, developing, and distributing information. Today, we live in the age of information. Even the most obscure historical content is at your fingertips. It’s true that the decline of history departments has coincided with the rising popularity of history podcasts. The Rest is History, presented by British historians Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland, boasts 12 million downloads a month.

However, in an age of censorship, universities could still have an important role to play. They hold more credibility than the average podcast. If universities maintain the rigour and academic integrity that has long defined them, they need not become obsolete. If they strip ideology from the syllabus and restore intellectual balance, they can continue to play a crucial role in shaping our understanding of the past – and our future.

Without change, Australians are currently walking down a path of national forgetfulness. A society that loses touch with its history also risks losing its sense of identity. If we want to foster a society that is both informed and free, we must liberate history from the ideological trappings within which it is now taught.

Brianna McKee is a Research Fellow and the National Manager of Generation Liberty at the Institute of Public Affairs