Bachelor of Arts

Macquarie's Bachelor of Arts is genuinely broad rather than a single-discipline degree with a generic label. Majors span history, philosophy, international studies, media, English, politics, ancient history, linguistics and a long list of languages, and students commonly combine two majors rather than committing to one, similar to how the Commerce degree is structured. The Faculty of Arts is one of the university's larger faculties and its ancient history and Egyptology programs in particular have a reputation that draws students from well outside Sydney specifically for that specialisation, a genuine point of distinction few other Australian BA programs can match.

Like every Macquarie undergraduate degree, the BA carries a compulsory PACE unit, so arts students end up with a documented placement or community-engagement project on their transcript rather than the degree being purely classroom-based, which matters for a cohort often steered (fairly or not) toward assumptions about limited direct career pathways. Students planning postgraduate study in a specific humanities discipline, or aiming at teaching, law, journalism or public service career tracks, typically use the major and elective combination to build toward those follow-on qualifications rather than treating the BA as a terminal generalist credential.

The degree also functions as the entry point for language study leading toward Macquarie's translation and interpreting postgraduate programs, since a number of the languages taught at undergraduate level (Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish) map directly onto the postgraduate NAATI-accredited pathway.