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History isn’t a ‘useless’ major. It teaches critical thinking, something America needs plenty more of – LA Times

Since the beginning of the Great Recession in 2007, the history major has lost significant market share in academia, declining from 2.2% of all undergraduate degrees to 1.7%. The graduating class of 2014, the most recent for which there are national data, included 9% fewer history majors than the previous year’s cohort, compounding a 2.8% decrease the year before that. The drop is most pronounced at large research universities and prestigious liberal arts colleges.

Source: History isn’t a ‘useless’ major. It teaches critical thinking, something America needs plenty more of – LA Times

This is an article that an acquaintance of mine had posted on Facebook, and it stands to make another positive argument in favor of history majors (like me).  I’ve said many times that I was not suited to do a traditional English or Journalism major because I really didn’t want to get bogged down in literature–not that literature is problematic, but it’s not for me.  Whereas understanding the finer details of grammar, and doing the research…ah, that’s where a history major’s strengths come into play, and help make better technical communicators.

Read this article, and tell me what you think in the comments below.

–TechCommGeekMom

Author:

Danielle M. Villegas is a technical communicator who currently employed at Cox Automotive, Inc., and freelances as her own technical communications consultancy, Dair Communications. She has worked at the International Refugee Committee, MetLife, Novo Nordisk, BASF North America, Merck, and Deloitte, with a background in content strategy, web content management, social media, project management, e-learning, and client services. Danielle is best known in the technical communications world for her blog, TechCommGeekMom.com, which has continued to flourish since it was launched during her graduate studies at NJIT in 2012. She has presented webinars and seminars for Adobe, the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the IEEE ProComm, TCUK (ISTC) and at Drexel University’s eLearning Conference. She has written articles for the STC Intercom, STC Notebook, the Content Rules blog, and The Content Wrangler as well. She is very active in the STC, as a former chapter president for the STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter, and is currently serving on three STC Board committees. You can learn more about Danielle on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/daniellemvillegas, on Twitter @techcommgeekmom, or through her blog. All content is the owner's opinions, and does not reflect those of her employers past or present.

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