Bachelor of Arts

The ANU Bachelor of Arts is deliberately open-ended: 144 units with no compulsory course sitting inside the degree itself, just a requirement to complete one arts major and one arts minor from a list running past fifty options. That's unusually wide even by Group of Eight standards; students end up building a genuinely idiosyncratic combination, say a Linguistics major with an Ancient Greek minor, or Political Science paired with a Creative Writing minor, rather than following a fixed pathway.

Because ANU sits next to the National Library, the National Archives, Parliament House, and a cluster of foreign embassies, the Arts cohort has access to internships and research placements that a BA at a metro university in Sydney or Melbourne doesn't offer in the same concentration. Students doing History or Political Science majors frequently end up doing a placement in a federal department or an embassy cultural section during their degree.

Most people take it as part of a Flexible Double Degree rather than standalone, pairing Arts with Science, Law, or PPE is common enough that it shapes how the timetable is built. Students who take it standalone often use the flexibility to front-load electives outside arts entirely before settling into their major in second year.