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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a professional historian and what bothers me isn't so much the number of majors, it's that the number of faculty and course offerings are so dependent on majors. Wouldn't it be GREAT if students focused on business, economics, engineering, comp sci, etc also had a strong grounding in history? Wouldn't it be awesome if it were part of the tool kit for future leaders?

I would love to see history integrated across the curriculum. But I guess I AM describing liberal arts education. [/quote]

Yes it would be great.  The undergrad business program where I went to school and my MBA program both offered business history electives.  I didn't take the MBA class but I got some history exposure in my economics undergrad.  I also independently read Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism. So I'd say I have covered at least a survey course worth of material about Anglo-European business history.

I know quite a few people who are very interested in history but they didn't express that interest in a college setting.  I would like to see college history departments do more work to identify the classes that would compel undergrads to get excited and enroll.  Or multidisciplinary courses that could count for at least two different types of distribution requirements.

For engineering, an engineering ethics class serves some of the purpose that a history class might serve.  In business programs, business law is a more common requirement that also incorporates some aspects of what a history course would cover.  In some sense, history is built into these classes, even though different faculty  departments would usually offer them.[/quote]

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