Welters, Riccardo, and Kuttainen, Jonathan (2025) Valuing the Regional Humanities, Economically. Australian Humanities Review, 73. pp. 219-236.

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Abstract

In an environment in which budget limitations force governments to choose between a selection of public services for preferential funding, public-service providers are under pressure to demonstrate ‘value’, especially if they require public funding. To justify the direction of public funding, governments mandate providers to conduct cost-benefit or social return-on-investment analyses to demonstrate the return on a dollar invested in a public service. This creates an environment in which providers are required to engage in an exercise to gage the dollar-value of the public service.

While universities are publicly funded institutions in Australia, the mandate to demonstrate ‘economic value’ has encountered considerable resistance, especially from HASS scholars.[1] The issue is not constrained to the Australian context either. There is a substantial body of diverse research from various humanities and social sciences disciplines addresses many concerns related to valuing the humanities and the complexities of such approaches within their national contexts over the last several decades. In fact, there exists a broad literature that draws on multiple perspectives to establish the intrinsic value of HASS for both society and individuals who pursue them. Some reject the notion of a valuation exercise in public-service provision outright. Others challenge the process engaged in a valuation exercise, asking for example, who is to determine what is of value and value to whom?

To ensure that the concerns raised by scholars regarding the valuation of HASS scholarship and teaching are not downplayed, this essay will first consider key critiques and public benefits identified in the research. The aim is to characterise the overall thrust of the arguments related to valuation and impact analysis.

Following this, the essay will focus on proposed methods that can generally be used to attribute value to the provision of public services, specifically applied to regional tertiary humanities and social science sector and its attempts to engage in the valuation exercise to examine impact on individuals and communities, particularly among those who hold humanities degrees. This perspective is particularly relevant in regions where the value of humanities education may be less recognised or appreciated. While this analysis emphasises personal and communal benefits, it is important to acknowledge that other forms of value—such as contributions to cultural enrichment—are beyond the scope of this article. As we will see in this essay, HASS scholars would be well served, within the current marketised environment, to proactively engage with these discussions, especially if they wish to influence market-driven discourses.

Item ID:	86028
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1325-8338
Copyright Information:	© Australian Humanities Review. AHR has been published as an Open Access publication since 1996 according to the definition of the Budapest Open Access Initiative: “By ‘open access’, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”
Date Deposited:	02 Jul 2025 02:28
FoR Codes:	38 ECONOMICS > 3801 Applied economics > 380104 Economics of education @ 100%
SEO Codes:	15 ECONOMIC FRAMEWORK > 1503 Management and productivity > 150305 Public sector productivity @ 100%
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