Beyond STEM: Humanities and the Social Sciences

By Chris Whelan, Chief Executive
Universities New Zealand - Te Pokai Tara

There’s been a lot of noise about the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS)[1] over the past year following the decision in December 2024 to no longer support HASS projects through the Marsden Fund. 

Since then, I’ve read and heard from a wide range of people across government, across universities, and across the wider research community.  I’ve seen and heard well-reasoned and logically consistent arguments from everyone.  What I haven’t personally seen much of is genuine good faith engagement and attempts to understand the different perspectives and views.

Here's what I would personally suggest and convey if I was talking to people driving policy within the current coalition Government, and what I would personally suggest and convey if I was talking to our HASS research community.

If I was talking to Government…

I’d note that almost exactly 33% of all university students are focussed on studies in one or more HASS subjects[2].  When they graduate from university, they enjoy good employment outcomes with earnings about the same as for many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) graduates and with similar rates of unemployment (around 1%) and under-employment (low).

Just over 21% of research active academics in New Zealand universities are in HASS subjects[3].  They do a wide range of research, but it broadly covers at least one and usually several of the following categories:

1. It is done with, or for, an end user - usually because the end user is contributing time and/or money.
2. It is done for the academic to improve their research profile and reputation as they gain the seniority and research reputation that will allow them to successfully compete for external research funding.
3. It is done because it will be interesting to other academics nationally and internationally and will grow their reputation through citations, conference presentations, and developing their networks.
4. It is done because it is engaging and interesting for students. They gain transferrable skills by studying in disciplines they are unlikely to ever actually work in. (Disclosure, I’ve got a history degree and have spent most of my career doing non-history stuff using history skills).

Without external research funding, a larger proportion of the research done by academics and the postgraduate research projects undertaken by students is necessarily focussed on the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th areas above – research that is interesting and that develops skills and academic profile, but that may not have a practical use or an interested end user outside of academia.

Governments complain about too much useless research coming out of HASS, but don’t (or won’t) invest in incentivising research that they would value in the sector

Profile building research is important, particularly for early career researchers.  If Government wants effective mid-career researchers working on real work problems, they need to be investing in the early career research.

Government also needs to understand that performance in HASS actually leads to better outcomes in STEM.

Universities depend upon signals of quality to recruit and retain the best teachers and researchers.  When an academic outside of New Zealand is considering whether to apply for a job opening at a New Zealand university, measures like rankings and citation rates are things they consider.

Analysis of Leiden Open bibliometric data for 2019-2022[4] shows that, for New Zealand, HASS is responsible for nearly 30% of indexed research outputs – second only to biomedical and health sciences. 

Number of normalised citations by broad field of research, NZ universities, 2012-15 and 2019-22

Source: Leiden Ranking, Open Edition 2024. Note: Uses fractional counting. Excludes Lincoln University

This flows through to international rankings where citation rates and research reputation make up a substantial proportion of how rankings are calculated – 75.5% of Times Higher, and 55% of QS.

Looking at the QS subject rankings for 2024, New Zealand universities are all in the world’s top 500 universities.  There are 54 subjects in the QS rankings.  New Zealand universities do well in the STEM subjects with an average of 11.25 subjects highly ranked per university.  By contrast, our universities have an average of 12.6 highly ranked HASS subjects.  The HASS subjects are pushing all our universities further up the rankings. 

Most international students consider university and subject rankings in their decisions of where to study.  HASS is lifting rankings, which in turn, is lifting this country’s export earnings.

And by the same token, HASS is helping generate revenue that universities can reinvest in recruiting and retaining world class HASS and STEM researchers and teachers, and in supporting postgraduate research and early career researchers.

The most common employment pathways for HASS graduates include roles in government and teaching - through a surprising number end up applying their research, critical thinking, interpersonal, and communication skills across a wide range of management, consulting, and IT support roles.

If Governments would like more of their junior policy analysts and new teachers with more applied research skills, then it again depends on getting the incentives right around what students and their supervisors are jointly researching.

If I was talking to academics across the HASS disciplines…

One thing I recall from the couple of economics papers I took at university was the ‘brown onions problem’.  The problem goes as follows - one year there is a shortage of brown onions because everyone has planted potatoes.  That year brown onions sell for $10 a kilogram, where potatoes are $1.  The next year everyone rips up their potatoes and goes for onions.  Supply and demand means that the next year brown onions are $1 a kilogram and potatoes $10.

Governments are elected and they go through vigorous performance review once every three years where they have to justify themselves to voters.

This Government is focussed on wellbeing and growth while trying to manage down a deficit.  They are openly prioritising research that has real world benefits and economic impact.

A future Government may prioritise HASS again and we shouldn’t be (metaphorically) ripping out our HASS capability and replanting solely in STEM.  [Yes, I know I’m pushing the brown onion metaphor a little bit far!].

HASS needs to be better at demonstrating real world relevance and impact.  Yes, sometimes that impact is about producing researchers and critical thinkers (and artists and musicians and writers, etc), but some of it is also about investing in things that make sense to taxpayers.

It is quite sobering doing an online search for real-world impact from HASS research.  There are quite a few good examples of research in the social sciences, but a lot less in the humanities and arts.

I tried about a dozen Google searches and Chat GPT.  Acknowledging that I may have been looking for the wrong things, I ran a number of searches that linked words like ‘New Zealand’, ‘arts and humanities’, ‘research’, ‘impact’, ‘case studies’, etc.

There are lots of sites that make sweeping claims about the real world relevance of the arts and humanities (I believe that too and I know it to be true!).

There are lots of articles lamenting the current government’s deprioritising arts and humanities with claims that there will be real world losses (but no detail).

But, it’s really really hard finding real world examples online of where and how humanities and arts research is benefiting taxpayers. 

We are telling people we are valuable but not showing people exactly where and how.

HASS disciplines can’t just complain about ‘barbarians at the gate’ and being undervalued when the current government can’t immediately see the intrinsic value of our research – particularly where it doesn’t align with their preferences and priorities.

We can help ourselves and all flavours of future governments by getting better at this.

Notes:

[1] Note that I’m defining HASS as follows; the ‘Humanities and Arts’ include subjects such as history, philosophy, languages, literature, music, performance, religious studies, and journalism.  The ‘Social Sciences’ include anthropology, political science, international relations, psychology, sociology, geography, economics, and criminology.

[2] Education Counts - https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/tertiary-participation - Provider Based Enrolments Predominant Field of Study

[3] As at the 2020 PBRF round, there were 1,584 active researchers in the four groupings (a) law, politics, and community services [287 researchers], (b) cultural understanding, creative arts, and communications [915 researchers], (c) economic framework [254 researchers], and (d) knowledge – general and other [128 researchers].  The 1,584 were 21.15% of the 6,299 active researchers across all 9 research groupings.

[4] With grateful thanks to Roger Smyth for doing the Leiden analysis and table.