I have been thinking a lot about this academically trained historian versus independently trained historian business for some time. For the sake of full disclosure and so one may see where I'm coming from, I went to Liberty University graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor's in history. I worked three years giving tours at two museum/historical sites but wasn't to find a full time position. I started work on a Masters degree at James Madison University but quit after a semester due to health as well as just being burned out on school.
Since not being connected to any academic institution for about four months; I have tried to stay up to date on the history world. And recently read two articles both flying warning flags about the future of the study of history.
The first article an opinion piece from Max Boot for the Washington post about the sorry condition of American's knowledge of American history. He points out the decline of history majors in Universities around the country. Including the fact that the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Pointe had considered discontinuing history classes all together (at the time of this writing I don't know if they actually called it quits on their history program). The second article, A New York Times piece talked about President Obama's Presidential Center and how it won't technically be a Presidential Library. It won't actually house a physical collection. Obama's papers will be digitalized and accessed online. Some Public Historians have voiced concerns about what this means for scholarship on the Obama Administration in the future. A digital collection can be easier to limit scholars access; as well as concerns about curation and preservation. If there isn't a repository for donations, items not already in the National Archives collection may be lost.
The theme in both of these articles is how we study the past is changing. No longer is historical knowledge just being distrubuted through universities and museums. Some call this trend the democratization of history.
President Obama's documents being put online instead of a physical collection or the apparent lack of interest in making history ones prime vocation in the coming generation. These are not signs of the end, on the contrary these are merely signs that history is being less centralized. History as an interest is actuality booming. Genealogy sites are everywhere and thriving from subscription sites to genetic testing. Documentaries are available where ever films are sold or streamed. Podcasts and blogs from amateur historians are easily found on the internet. Historical knowledge is readily available to all who is looking. What is collapsing is the professional apparatus, the academy.
After 2008 many saw the falling number of social science majors as a sign of the recession. Ten years after the fact, and we are still seeing these numbers fall. The academy is in the awkward position training young people one discipline (a very expensive training), many millennial have gotten used to the idea of the side hustle, working two and three jobs at once.
Even those we consider professional historians have not come directly from the academy. Nick Bunker, author of An Empire on the Edge, in an interview stated that he had careers in journalism and finance before writing two critically acclaimed history books.
Don't freak out! The study of history as an academic discipline is relatively new. The first PhD awarded in the US, ever, was from Yale in 1861. The academic system that we know today has only been around for about 200 years. People have been studying history without history degrees for centuries. Think of Herodotus, Thucydides, or Polybius. According to one story Edward Gibbon thought his brief stay at Oxford was a waste of time. Just because there are fewer history majors doesn't mean the world will collapse into idiocracy or an Orwellian nightmare. Or that history will be forgotten (any more than it already has). There will still be those who have questions, those who will want to know how did we get here and those who love the stories.
So, stop worrying and learn to love history.
The Journal of American History Vol. 105 No. 3 December 2018. pg. 505-513.
Edward Ayers, Everyone Their Own Historian.
