You would be able to see that only if you know a little about history

From The Historical Profession is Committing slow-Motion Suicide by Hal Brands and Francis J. Gavin.

A recent study confirms a disturbing trend: American college students are abandoning the study of history. Since 2008, the number of students majoring in history in U.S. universities has dropped 30 percent, and history now accounts for a smaller share of all U.S. bachelor’s degrees than at any time since 1950. Although all humanities disciplines have suffered declining enrollments since 2008, none has fallen as far as history. And this decline in majors has been even steeper at elite, private universities — the very institutions that act as standard bearers and gate-keepers for the discipline. The study of history, it seems, is itself becoming a relic of the past.

It is tempting to blame this decline on relatively recent factors from outside the historical profession. There are more majors to choose from than in the past. As a broader segment of American society has pursued higher education, promising job prospects offered by other fields, from engineering to business, has no doubt played a role in history’s decline. Women have moved in disproportionate numbers away from the humanities and towards the social sciences. The lingering consequences of the Great Recession and the growing emphasis on STEM education have had their effects, as well.

Yet a deeper dive into the statistics reveals that history’s fortunes have worsened not over a period of years, but over decades. In the late 1960s, over six percent of male undergraduates and almost five percent of female undergraduates majored in history. Today, those numbers are less than 2 percent and 1 percent. History’s collapse began well before the financial crash.

All that is consistent with other research I have read.

I disagree with their conclusion:

This fact underscores the sad truth of history’s predicament: The discipline mostly has itself to blame for its current woes. In recent decades, the academic historical profession has become steadily less accessible to students and the general public — and steadily less relevant to addressing critical matters of politics, diplomacy, and war and peace. It is not surprising that students are fleeing history, for the historical discipline has long been fleeing its twin responsibilities to interact with the outside world and engage some of the most fundamental issues confronting the United States.

As they mentioned, all humanities degrees have been in decline for some decades. As more and more people attend university (from 5% of the population to 30% of the population) and as the cost of higher education inflates far faster than virtually every other purchase, there is a premium on monetizable degrees.

More people graduating with a college degree commodifies the product - it is less of a differentiator in the market and therefore worth less. The degree becomes worth less as an investment.

Broader/looser admissions standards reduces the capacity of a degree to signal capability and achievement. The degree becomes worth less as an investment.

More expensive cost of education means that students have to shift their studies into fields with more obvious and remunerative opportunities.

A college degree is worth less and less and costs more - no wonder people are, in general, moving away from hard content but low remuneration degrees. They shift into either hard content degrees with high remuneration or into low content degrees with low remuneration.

In addition, the dominance of low capability administrators with no visible spinal structure, in combination with the anti-western civilization orientation of radical students ("Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture's got to go”) and the generally high level of statism/neo-Marxism/Postmodernism in most universities, you'd have to be almost a glutton for punishment to pursue history as a major.

University administrators at the behest of a minority of radical students have attacked the goose that laid the golden egg. Western Civilization has brought us to the point where people are living longer, better, more prosperous, healthier lives everywhere in the world and yet academia cannot help itself. They are slaves to their constrained postmodernist world view.

Brands and Gavin lay the decline at the feet of historians. I am not so sure. I am a lifelong history reader. There has always been a portfolio of gifted historical interpreters who are also gifted writers, historians of narrow technical focus, and just plan sloppy history writing. I am not convinced I see much change in the percentages of each of those groups.

But this persistent decline in people taking a history degree might have a consequence. I am not certain that it is that we have fewer historians. I think it is one or two degrees removed from that. If fewer people are taking degrees in history then there are fewer and fewer conversations about history which other students can be party to, regardless of their majors. Since most people pick up most their history from vernacular channels rather than academic channels, then this loss of exposure to conversations laced with history might be the greater consequence.

And an absence of historical knowledge, perspective or knowledge is increasingly manifest among the young and the media. It is the only way to credit otherwise unfathomable claims. They must simply not know. If anyone thinks we are in the worst of polarized times, then they have forgotten the Civil War, Bloody Kansas, Shay's Rebellion, Reconstruction, desegregation, domestic protests over the Vietnam War, the Chicago Convention of 1968, Kent State, etc.

Our establishment-Mandarin Class with their monopoly media are distressed and polarized, but the rest of America is pretty fine and easy-going. But you would be able to see that only if you know a little about history.