I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but whether you live in a capitalist, socialist, communist or what ever other types of economic systems are available, you need to be intellectually honest about what types of workers the society needs to be able thrive.
How many historians do you want qualified before you would say, “maybe we should incentivise people in to things like medicine or engineering”, a hundred thousand, a million?
Of course history is important, but there’s clearly a sensible limit to how many job opportunities there are for curators, archeologists, researchers, teachers etc.
In the UK, more or less fifty percent of young people have a uni level of education but there are not fifty percent of vacant jobs that require a degree level education. It might be absolute lovely that my barista has a history degree, but they could have joined the workforce several years earlier, have dozens of thousands pounds less in debt and still had the opportunity to study history in their own time.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but whether you live in a capitalist, socialist, communist or what ever other types of economic systems are available, you need to be intellectually honest about what types of workers the society needs to be able thrive.
How many historians do you want qualified before you would say, “maybe we should incentivise people in to things like medicine or engineering”, a hundred thousand, a million?
Of course history is important, but there’s clearly a sensible limit to how many job opportunities there are for curators, archeologists, researchers, teachers etc.
In the UK, more or less fifty percent of young people have a uni level of education but there are not fifty percent of vacant jobs that require a degree level education. It might be absolute lovely that my barista has a history degree, but they could have joined the workforce several years earlier, have dozens of thousands pounds less in debt and still had the opportunity to study history in their own time.