A kind reader asked me if I would recommend pursuing the path of studying history. . . And I don’t have an answer, but I have certain thoughts. So, I’ll share those thoughts, and if anyone has any other thoughts or ideas, please feel free to share them in the comments.
I’ll start with the dark ones and then move toward the brighter ones (but they don’t get that bright, so no need for sunglasses).
In 2020, I wrote an essay that I entitled “Neoliberalism & Online Teaching Did Not Kill Higher Education – Professors & Administrators Did.”
It was a few months into the pandemic, and teachers and professors around the world were all teaching online. For many, it was the first time to do things like record and upload a video.
I predicted in that essay that this experience would “stick,” because professors would realize, “Hey, I don’t have to teach anymore! I can just upload a video once and voilà! I’m done.”
Five years later, I can see that in the world I know in North America, this has indeed happened. Not everyone is doing this, but plenty are. And I’m talking about tenured profs.
I then predicted in that essay that by about 2030, employers would realize that such online classes were not preparing people for anything, and administrators would be forced to change back to in-person instruction [probably too optimistic, but it was the thought/hope that I had].
That was a prediction that I made in 2020. And then AI came along. . .
So, now what I’m reading is that there are administrators who are thinking, “Hmm. . . we’ve got a bunch of courses where profs are just recycling videos of them reading over PowerPoint slides, so why don’t we use AI and create an app like DuoLingo for those courses?”
Yea, why not? After all, if it’s just replacing uploaded videos. . . So, if I were to rewrite that essay now, it would be called “AI Did Not Kill Higher Education – Professors & Administrators Did.”
What I’m saying is that I think History in higher education is toast. AI is going to wipe it out in many places because profs have already made it replaceable.
The position of History in higher education in places like North America has been sliding down a slope towards oblivion since the 2008 economic crisis. At first, people blamed it on students being more “practical” because they want a job, but I never believed that.
My memory of people going to college goes back to the 1970s, and everyone I know was practical about their majors. I think it’s just the baby boomer generation prior to that point who perhaps thought differently.
As such, that History became unpopular is not because students suddenly became practical. It’s because History became irrelevant. And the thing that made it irrelevant was the Internet.
Back in the Analog Age, there was this idea that somehow students needed to know history to become informed citizens who could support a healthy democracy. How exactly that was supposed to happen was never clear, but profs believed that they were fulfilling an important mission.
From the perspective of students, on the other hand, there was a practical reason for studying History. In particular, it was considered to be good preparation for things like law school.
I feel like the rise of the Internet destroyed the walls of the ivory tower. Much of whatever knowledge professors thought they managed, and what students theoretically needed to go to a physical university to access, was suddenly easily available anywhere (and now with AI, that is exponentially more the case).
And with the rise of social media, for many young people, the known world concentrated onto the screens of their smartphones, but in that world, there was very little History, because the historians hunkered down in their now-transparent ivory towers.
So, in the years following the 2008 economic crisis, it was not that young people were too “practical” to study History, it was more that it simply was no longer a known option.
During that time period I served as the undergraduate coordinator for a History department, and I used to ask every new major (and that number declined rapidly) why s/he decided to study History. In just a few years it went from “I want to go to law school” or “I want to be a journalist” to “Umm, ah, I dunno, umm, I mean, my dad has a lot of books, so, umm. . . yea.”
That’s what I see in North America, and I’m guessing Europe and Australia could be similar. In a lot of places in Asia, I see an added problem, and it is the rankings craze. The need for publications to promote university rankings has led to an intense focus on publishing.
It’s basically all universities care about. And historians don’t publish as much as others, and they don’t get cited much, so their future is bleak.
In the 1990s, when I was in graduate school, people in fields like American history were already saying that it was pretty much impossible to find a job. However, many History departments were adding an Asia specialist to “diversify” their offerings, so there were still some opportunities for such people.
However, in the 2010s, jobs became fewer and fewer, and now there is pretty much nothing anywhere, for many fields. People are still hiring for “machine learning,” but I think that will be short-lived, as once you’ve taught the machine. . . you don’t need to teach it again.
Then there are so many other things that are negatively affecting the field, like the progressiveness which pushes people to focus on certain topics and approaches. With the rise of Cultural Studies in the early 1990s, there emerged a kind of scholarship that we can call the “You think A, but it’s actually B” approach, and it gets repeated over and over and over and over and over and over.
It started with things like studies on beauty contests. “You think it’s just a contest between pretty ladies? Actually, it’s a horrific scene of capitalist and gender exploitation,” etc.
At first this had an element of surprise, but after you had read 3-4 articles that all followed the same pattern. . . And by now, it has been repeated so much that for so many topics, you don’t even need to read what someone wrote because you already know what the conclusion will be.
A book on the colonial post office? Let me guess – What the colonizer saw as a civilizing mission to bring modern communication to the colony was actually a space of racial hierarchy and epistemological violence, etc.
That being the world that is currently out there, and with AI and numerous other challenges that universities are facing, should one pursue the path of studying history?
If it requires going into debt, then I would say definitely not.
If one is doing it with the plan to be able to land a well-paying job where one can sit in a spacious office in a brick building with ivy vines, casually reading some old book that you got from the library. . . then you’ll need a time machine to be able to attain that.
In terms of being practical about the future, I feel like there is no longer any way to plan for that, beyond perhaps the various trades, from plumber to certain kinds of doctor.
So, in such a world, is spending a few years studying History as impractical now as studying Computer Science? I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but give AI another few months and we’ll see.
That said, if you have the language skills, then we are still living in the best age ever to conduct historical research. Between the easy availability of so many sources and the assistance that AI can provide, there are so many possibilities.
But in the end, I would say that if you feel like you have to do it, then do it.
But do it to be damn good at it. There isn’t a need in the world for a half-ass historian, and there are definitely no career opportunities for such an historian anymore.
If you work your arse off to become a damn good historian, then you still might not get a job, but you’ll theoretically be smart enough to figure something else out. . . And hopefully you will have produced something by that point that will be of value to the people in the world who are interested.
Having said all that, as a passion, does the path of studying History have to follow formal education? I certainly don’t think so. By this point, so much of academia has hit a dead end. Having to go and “learn the profession” seems like a waste of time to me now. Ask Grok to tell you what the key issues in a field are and start digging on your own from there.
Then start a YouTube/TikTok channel and talk about the stuff your passionate about and see if you can get anyone interested, and see where that goes.
People will think you’re smart as long as you don’t tell them about Mr. Grok.
Seriously, I have no idea. History is amazingly interesting, but the formal structures for studying it right now are in bad shape.
So, . . . Flip a coin? Ask a fortune teller, maybe?
Well, when machines can write and reason about the importance of learning history the way you do, maybe we won’t need history professors anymore! One thing AI could truly help an old baby boomer like me with is translating the key classical Chinese texts that illuminate Vietnamese history. As for interpretation, commentary, and insight — those should always remain in the hands of individual readers.
Yea, this is true. AI can now translate classical Chinese texts very well. I’m sure that there are still some types of texts that it will struggle with, but I was doing some testing with the Dai Viet su ky toan thu a while back and. . . it was basically ok.
It’s not just history, the humanities are in a bade shape. And I have to disagree with you.. being practical is definitely a major reason 🤔 In our current environment, practical and career oriented skills are prioritized over academic knowledge; STEM, healthcare, and the trades are rising in popularity while the humanities are in institutional decline 🤣 A growing right wing skepticism of the humanities doesn’t help at all too 😉
Yea, I’ve been making this same point for years because, 1) while I agree with what you say, 2) only saying that absolves profs and universities of any responsibility, when in reality, there was a lot that they could have done to at least try to adapt to the changing world (I don’t know if it would have worked, but they could have at least made an effort). When everything went digital and then into social media, the focus of the humanities continued to be that shining 25-page paper in 12-point New Times Roman font with footnotes following the Chicago Manual of Style. . . Active web presence to show that you are alive and functioning? No way! Adoption of something “digital” to try to at least make it look like maybe you are doing something new? Also, no way!
It’s only in the past few years that I’ve seen these things start to slowly get adopted, but that’s already 10-15 years too late.
So, yes, students are practical (as they long have been – I thought that way back in the 1980s), but man profs really didn’t make much effort to try to give them a reason to study History in this new age. That’s why I emphasize that point. History today is in many places exactly like it was back in the 1990s (or earlier), but the world is very different.
Ok… I see and agree with you. But there aren’t a lot of digital formats for this type of content, and the ones that do (blogs, youtube videos, podcasts) are extremely time consuming and discouraging 😉 Though I agree, I’m not defending them, the profs are the authorities on their fields and then they don’t try to exert that authority at all… 😂