The trivialization of post-America

This ought to disturb us all:

Since the economic crisis of 2008, the pattern of undergraduate majors has been shifting across American higher education. Of all the major disciplines, history has seen the steepest declines in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded. In 2008, the National Center for Education Statistics reported 34,642 majors in history; in 2017, the most recent year for which data are available, the number was 24,266. Between 2016 and 2017, the number of history majors fell by over 1,500. Even as university enrollments have grown, history has seen its raw numbers erode heavily. The drops have been especially heavy since 2011–12, the first years for which students who saw the financial crisis in action could easily change their majors; of all the fields I’ve looked at . . . , history has fallen more than any other in the last six years.

After a a lengthy statistical deep dive, the author concludes thusly:

Ultimately, whether through majors or course enrollments, the long-term state of the discipline will rest on how it adapts to a cohort of students—and their parents—who are much less receptive to arguments for the liberal arts than previous generations have been. 

This is particularly horrifying in light of the ascendancy of "studies" fields. In fact, I'm a little surprised that the author didn't have anything to say about the usurpation of the overall humanities by these play-like "academic disciplines."

He does understandably spend a considerable number of paragraphs on the current appeal of STEM fields, particularly those that prepare one for an engineering career. We live in a time where it seems imperative that we learn how to make more things. We may not know why, but we know we must.

Yes, it's a wonky analysis in a scholarly journal. Still, the glaringly obvious conclusion goes unsaid: We are rapidly becoming an ignorant and shallow society. If you want to talk statistics, let's make note of the number of people in various age brackets who can't place the Civil War anywhere near the decade in which it occurred, to employ some shorthand in the illustration of post-America's intellectual impoverishment.

There is no way one can understand what a human being is, or a truly quality human life is, without a working knowledge of history. We have no idea why we do anything. We have no basis for formulation a value system beyond reacting to the stimuli with which we're presented with either "Ouch! I don't want any more of that," or "That was really gratifying. I'll take more of that."

We have no basis for discussing how a human society ought to be organized beyond dragging our particular tribe over the finish line so the leviathan state will smooth our way through life.

This article really was a smack upside the head. I'd intuited that which it spells out, but, like seeing the actual numbers of a household budget that comes up short, it makes the question of how to proceed with turning things around more daunting than one had been prepared to consider.