Why History Matters

The decision of leaders at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point to eliminate the history major, among other humanities fields, recently became front-page news in The New York Times. One student asked, "What is a university without a history major?" The decision at Stevens Point is not just the story of one rural university facing problems. History enrollments are in steep decline at colleges across the country. By one estimate, the number of history degrees awarded between 2008 and 2017 dropped more than 30 percent, exceeding declines in any other field.

The reasons for the latest falloff are easy enough to imagine: More students have turned to courses and majors in STEM fields with an eye toward employment after college; as colleges began eliminating core or distribution requirements, fewer students were introduced to the history field; history departments became increasingly specialized in their course offerings, making the major less appealing to the broadest spectrum of students.

None of this is new, and it is incumbent on historians to provide historical perspective. A headline in the Times once reported, "Ignorance of U.S. History Shown by College Freshmen." The date was April 4, 1943. The article bemoaned that "82 percent of the colleges of this country do not require the teaching of United States history for an undergraduate degree." The results of a questionnaire administered to 7,000 college students showed, for example, that 25 percent did not know that Abraham Lincoln was president during the Civil War.