The University of Hertfordshire's decision to axe entire humanities departments, including English Literature, Philosophy, History, Linguistics, and Creative Writing, has triggered predictable outrage. Critics denounce it as corporate vandalism or a philistine assault on culture. The deeper and more uncomfortable truth, however, is that young people are simply walking away. Low recruitment and collapsing demand are killing these courses. The primary reason is that activist academics have transformed humanities departments into ideological woke echo chambers.
Instead of immersing students in great literature, history, and ideas, many departments now centre queer theory, critical race theory, decolonisation agendas, postcolonial grievance, and neo-Marxist frameworks. Classic texts are no longer studied for their beauty, insight, or enduring value but are relentlessly dissected for their supposed sins against contemporary progressive orthodoxy. Modules increasingly resemble activist training manuals: heavy on Judith Butler, "interrogations" of power structures, and titles such as "Villains or Victims: White Women and the British Empire." Students who simply wanted to read Shakespeare, explore the Renaissance, or engage with Western civilisation receive something very different. Many respond by voting with their feet: they drop out or never enrol in the first place.
This represents the classic "long march through the institutions" in full effect. Activists have captured departments, reshaped hiring and funding priorities, and enforced ideological conformity. Dissenting scholars are marginalised or driven out. The predictable outcome is shrinking, increasingly irrelevant faculties that repel ordinary students while churning out jargon-heavy papers that few outside the clique ever read.
Australia is already well advanced down the same destructive path. Do not mistake this for a purely British affliction. Australian universities show every warning sign. Humanities and education faculties are saturated with critical social justice ideology, identity politics, and woke frameworks. Future teachers often receive more instruction in activism, sustainability, and equity than in core literacy and numeracy. Campuses feature safe spaces, no-platforming, DEI mandates, and imported Middle East tensions that have made open inquiry feel increasingly hostile for many students.
Like their British counterparts, many Australian institutions became dangerously dependent on full-fee international students, particularly from China and India, to subsidise domestic operations and support bloated administrations. When visa rules tightened or global conditions shifted, the revenue model cracked. Enrolments are falling, international rankings are slipping, and universities now face deficits, course cuts, and job losses. Domestic students often feel sidelined by the international cash cow, while governance scandals and a "business first, education second" culture further erode quality and public trust.
The pattern is unmistakable: ideological capture of the humanities and social sciences alienates normal students and parents; heavy reliance on foreign revenue papers over the cracks; and demographic, economic, and policy realities eventually bite hard. The result is shrinking or dying departments.
The human and national cost is substantial. A generation of students is saddled with debt for degrees of questionable value. Taxpayers and domestic students subsidise ideological playgrounds. Critical thinking, Western heritage, and genuine scholarship suffer, while the nation loses soft power and intellectual capital as standards decline. Universities, once dedicated to the pursuit of truth, the preservation of culture, and preparation for reality, have too often become expensive finishing schools for activism or cash cows for administrators.
Britain's humanities collapse sounds a loud alarm. Australia is already hearing the same sirens. If we continue allowing activists to hollow out these institutions from within, we will lose far more than individual departments, we will lose the very idea of the university as a place for free inquiry and civilisational continuity, if it has not already died.
The white ants have been busy for years. It is time to fumigate before the entire structure collapses.
https://dailysceptic.org/2026/05/13/britains-universities-are-being-destroyed-from-within/