An announcement: I am no longer a professor of history at Reinhardt University, and am in fact teaching at a charter school in Minneapolis. Accordingly, I believe it would be unseemly of me to continue posting here. Since Reinhardt has yanked my email account, if you would like to contact me, please do so at jdagood -at- hotmail -dot- com, with the appropriate substitutions.
Thank you for your readership.
From The Federalist:
Americans have a hunger to understand, explore, and connect with their history. Richly sourced, intellectually demanding accounts of the country’s defining moments and characters do more than break through the noise.
Indeed, historians are probably the scholars most celebrated outside the confines of the academy. They are among the few who shape our cultural landscape—from a place of learning. As though to prove the point, Chernow’s 832-page 2005 biography of Alexander Hamilton, also a New York Times best-seller, inspired the most talked-about Broadway musical in a generation. Only on the American college campus is American history on retreat.
How strange it is that U.S. colleges and universities are abandoning the study of American history and, at some institutions, the study of history altogether. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni evaluates the general education programs of more than 1,100 colleges and universities every year. The 2018–19 report found that only 17 percent of them required any kind of foundational course in American history or government. As of 2016, only four out of the top 25 national universities (as ranked by U.S. News and World Report) required a course in U.S. history in their history majors.
In this light, it is perhaps unsurprising that history programs in the United States are struggling to generate student interest. When the American Historical Association drew attention to cratering undergraduate degree production last year—the number of history degrees awarded annually has fallen almost 34 percent since 2011, more steeply than any other discipline in the liberal arts.
This is true even at my alma mater Dartmouth College, where I attended my 25th reunion last weekend.
Previous thoughts on the matter.
UPDATE: This is the 1000th post published on FFT since the blog’s inception in September 2014!
Probably no posts for the next month or so, as I will be traveling in the Middle East. I should have some material to blog about upon my return!
Apologies, everyone, for the silence of late. No real excuses, just the usual run of teaching, committee work, etc.
But a request for our readers: would someone leave a real comment? I have 53 comments awaiting moderation, most of which read like this:
Yesterday, while I was at work, my cousin stole my apple
ipad and tested to see if it can survive a 30 foot drop, just so she can be a youtube sensation. My apple
ipad is now destroyed and she has 83 views. I know this is entirely
off topic but I had to share it with someone!
***
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But, what concerning the conclusion? Are you sure in regards to the
supply?
Look into my blog post – Foot Pain Prevention
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***
If the comments don’t have links in them like “Foot Pain Prevention” above, the field where one is invited to leave one’s website features a link to some cheesy commercial operation.
I can’t see how this is a very effective way of advertising but I doubt anyone human is writing these comments.