In the current restructure of the College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS), the ANU school of sociology is set to be disestablished and subsumed into a vaguely defined new entity: the "School of Social Foundations and Futures".

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The Change Management Proposal provides no clear academic rationale. It replaces discipline-based schools of sociology and demography with a strange new work unit that lacks the clarity and coherence required to sustain strong social science teaching and research.

The loss of a standalone school of sociology would bury a discipline consistently ranked in the world's top 20 and undermine decades of intellectual investment.

These kinds of restructures often lead to long-term disciplinary decline.

History and philosophy have retained their schools in the research school of social sciences. A newly emerging interdisciplinary field like cybernetics has been granted school status. So why should sociology, a cornerstone of any serious school of social sciences, be targeted for contraction?

This is part of a wider pattern. The College of Arts and Social Sciences is facing $9.5 million in staff cuts - 66 per cent of total college staff cuts across ANU in 2025 - despite delivering the second-largest share of undergraduate teaching after economics and business.

If the restructure goes ahead, the College of Systems and Society will surpass CASS in recurrent funding, as core disciplines like sociology are destabilised. This isn't just a budget decision.

It's a signal about what knowledge ANU values, and what it's willing to discard.

Sociology is the scientific study of........

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