Last week I shared some quick thoughts on Ben Schmidt’s much-read report on the state of the history major. Using graduation numbers from the IPEDS database, he found that history has suffered a greater proportional decline since the Great Recession than any other major: in 2016-17, there were one-third fewer history grads than there were in 2011-12. … More The History Major at Christian Colleges
By now, I suspect that many of my readers have either read Ben Schmidt’s report for the American Historical Association or glanced at summaries of it in Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle of Higher Education. Short version: since 2011-12 (“the first years for which students who saw the financial crisis in action could easily change their majors”), … More Quick Thoughts on the History Major Report
It happened again this summer. I was faced with further evidence of declining enrollment in history, English, philosophy, theology, and other humanities disciplines at our institution. So after making a few other arguments, I arrived at my typical last line of defense: “Anyway, these things are cyclical. The humanities will come back. Just look at … More A Counterintuitive Economic Argument for Majoring in the Humanities
