History was the most popular major at Princeton just 25 years ago, but it's fallen hard -- from a high of 11.8% to just 3.8%.
In totally unrelated news, I have been on the Princeton History faculty for those same 25 years.
https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2024/11/princeton-opinion-column-careerism-career-humanities-ai-study
In totally unrelated news, I have been on the Princeton History faculty for those same 25 years.
https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2024/11/princeton-opinion-column-careerism-career-humanities-ai-study
Comments
A very necessary read for everyone
Counterintuitively all of Silicon Valley and influence jobs demand writing and liberal arts analytical skills to stand out in our sea of corporate mediocrity
Republicans are dumb.
I think the major problem is perception. Lot of people think it is just learning to memorize names and dates. They don't understand it helps develop research skills and critical thinking. Which in turn makes problem solving easier.
Plato, too, warned us of losing democracy to tyranny.
Indeed, there are consequences when we forget the lessons of history, or never learned them.
What are they learning? The most successful businesses have not been started or run by businesses majors. They’ve been started by engineers or by people who know a skill or craft.
I loved/still love history....
I do not see this "gravitate to a trade school" trend as helpful for our country. Or the universities.
But, I guess, it's far better than the anti-college rhetoric out there.
Advance degrees in STEM, some of which are BAs and not BSes, and require thinking... not so much.
Ignorance may be bliss for the ignorant, but it's insufferable and distressing for the rest of us.
https://ua.princeton.edu/fields-study/departmental-majors-degree-bachelor-arts/princeton-school-public-and-international
Today a beef heifer here goes for around $2k, and TU's tuition for a semester is about $30k. His whole herd wouldn't do it.
She is, however, looking at graduate programs.
"Dunno bruh, I think it's forever young. That's a saying, right?"
"Yeah. Those who forget the past are forever young."
Our numbers dropped as intended, and then they asked why we were losing majors.
They'd buy a Lefty show, nominally to put on their stations.
Then they'd kill the stations.
Then they'd complain we weren't on enough stations.
All while doing everything to undercut us, while trying to make sure we didn't break contracts and leave.
Meanwhile, we've got a Silicon Valley guy on our advisory board saying how much he likes to hire humanities majors who can analyze evidence and write clearly.
Actually attended a poster session at Educause from someone from U. Maryland who argued for the same thing, had a good chat with him.
(Had to pass a constitution test to start HS in Chicago. Where’d that go?)
https://bsky.app/profile/kevinmkruse.bsky.social/post/3larao33gw224
We need more humanists in the world. 🙂
So much is gained from a holistic education, but we all see how very much THEY benefit from an uneducated population.
I remain grateful to the advisor I spoke to for freshman course selection who asked me if I was interested in STEM, & when I said no, gently explained I was free to explore other things
The side effect, of course, was minimizing the Humanities, and I even felt guilt when I ended up a History/PoliSci major. I just don't grok STEM.
Ohhhh.
I love history and would have taken a ton of history classes, but was forced to take random stuff instead.
Fukuyama was right after all!!
Dammit, where were you 40 years ago!