Future of Academia Thread

This is a weird year from a couple of degrees to the historical side of the split between economics and history. On one side, talented young economists are getting job offers. On the other, great young historians are getting...nothing. (1/9)

One of the social purposes of universities is to discover/produce/create knowledge that may not have immediate commercial applications. Right now, quietly, disciplinary boundaries are determining what knowledge will be produced in the next 30–50 years. (2/9)

The large majority of new history (and other humanities) PhDs who don't find academic jobs are smart, motivated people. We can find jobs outside of the academy doing socially useful things. My point here is why the decline of history might matter for everyone else. (3/9)

How societies approach problems and what evidence they have to construct solutions are partly shaped by the non-commercial knowledge that comes out of universities. The disciplines that survive the 2020s are will define social problem-solving for the future. (4/9)

In this context, disciplinary boundaries are incredibly important. The @QJEHarvard used to publish articles like this: (5/9)

Neither of these articles would get past a first *glance* at the title from an economics journal editor today. Maybe that's good? Maybe it's not? Either way, it's the result of choices by economists over the last 100 years about what counts as economics. (6/9)

Right now, those choices about what research fits into disciplinary boundaries determine who gets hired and therefore what knowledge societies will have at hand in the future. (7/9)

I have my own views about the right answers, but what I want to highlight here is that this is an *institutional* choice (primarily by universities) with potentially large *social* consequences. Non-commercial knowledge production shapes what kind of society we have. (8/9)

This is not a personal lament (whether I get a job doesn't matter to you!), but we should think about choices that institutions make for society and the importance of non-commercial knowledge for big and small challenges in the future. (9/9)