Introductory political economy subjects in australian universities: recent trends and possible futures

This paper provides a stocktake of introductory political economy courses taught within Australian universities as at 2012, extending similar work undertaken in 2005. It compares the situation in 2012 to that in 2005 and analyses key aspects of political economy courses, including institutional location, enrolments, course content, and the degree programmes to which such courses belong. A key question examined is whether political economy has better prospects in social science faculties as opposed to its traditional home in faculties of business or commerce. The paper also considers some of the factors influencing the availability of political economy courses including incentives generated by the structure of the Australian Research Council's Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) ranking regime