I received this letter.
May I start by saying that I am a big admirer of yours and it is an honor to be communicating with you. My name is [X], and I am a senior at [Y High School in central Pennsylvania. I have listened to many of your lectures on Youtube from the Mises Institute, and I'm a subscriber of your tip of the week email. My class is currently working on our senior project, and the assignment is to research what occupation we hope to have. I plan on majoring in history at George Mason University, although I do not plan on becoming a teacher in the traditional sense. I could not see myself working in a high school or college teaching what is mandated by the state. This possibility is abhorrent to me, and I hope to avoid it. A key part of this assignment is to conduct an interview. Since you have a degree in history, yet have not followed the typical path of a history major, I would like to ask you a few questions.
1. What occupation did you plan on having when you decided to major in history?
First, I decided as a freshman to major in political science. I changed my mind when I transferred from Pomona College to the University of California, Riverside, in the second semester of my freshman year. At that point, I decided I would rather major in economics. But my experience with one of the most appallingly bad teachers I have ever had, in which I got a D -- the only D I ever got in my life -- convinced me that taking classroom economics would be a waste of my time. I was correct.
I majored in history specifically because I was good at history, and I had been good history by that time for at least five years. I decided that the best way to get out of college was to get out as fast as I could, and as easily as I could. I knew how to write. I knew how to read carefully. I understood a lot about history. I was governed by this principle: the law of least resistance.
2. What made you not decide to become a college or high school teacher?
The reason why I decided not to become a college professor is that the Ph.D. glut hit in the spring of 1969, exactly as the experts had been predicting for the previous five years. There was almost no way that I could get a job teaching history at the college level. I decided that it would be ridiculous for me even to try, but I was under pressure from my father-in-law to get my Ph.D., so I figured I might as well do it. I got scholarship money to do it. I got a teaching assistant's job to do it. In retrospect, it probably was a good idea, because a lot of people think that somebody who is called "Dr." must know something, and that helps build subscriptions. But that was not my plan in 1969.
3. What are some of the benefits of being able to teach people, without having to have the restriction of working in a brick and mortar institution?
The main benefit of teaching on the Web is simple: it is free of charge. The price is right! You can post a video on YouTube in a matter of a few minutes. You can produce a 30-minute video, if you know your topic, in less than two hours. I do this at least twice a day. My videos are posted on the Ron Paul Curriculum site.
Here are some excellent examples of historical videos that have been posted on YouTube. They are better than almost anything you will find. They were not produced by somebody with a Ph.D.
4. What is the best advice you can give to a history major who does not necessarily want to pursue teaching?
Don't major in history.
5. What are occupations you would recommend to a history major besides being a teacher in its traditional form?
None.
6. How important do you believe having a website has furthered or bettered your career, outreach, and name recognition?
Enormous.
7. Do you believe being an author benefits history majors? In what ways, and why?
No. Because nobody should major in history.
8. How have you grown in this field of study, both personally and professionally?
It has been extremely important in my career. But I didn't learn anything in a classroom that I could not have learned on my own. Anyone who wants to major in history should take CLEP exams to quiz out of his first two years of college, and then take distance-learning courses at no more than $200 per semester credit hour from some school that is offering an online program. It does not matter what the major is. You might as well not major in history, because you will not be able to get a job that is in any way related to a degree in history. It really does not matter what you major in, because this job market is so rotten that all that matters is that you have a bachelor's degree in something. This degree proves that you went through some program, somewhere, and that identifies you as somebody who can tolerate a lot of boredom. Businesses like people who don't make trouble. Anybody who gets a B.A. in history, or just about anything else, is probably not going to make a lot of trouble. He may also have an IQ of 110 or higher. That's all a businessman wants to know.
Anybody who wants to major in history should go to the websites of the best universities in the country, and print out the required reading lists for all of the courses that he would like to take. Then he should go onto Amazon, buy the cheapest editions of the books that he can find, at least those without any underlining in them, and order them. Then he should spend two hours a day, five days a week, reading these books.
My father-in-law read a book a day for over 50 years. He marked them up. He wrote articles and books that used them. He assembled a library of over 30,000 volumes. He put his reading to work. Here is output, year by year, for three years. (He kept these annual records all his life.)
If you don't put your reading to work, day by day, week by week, year by year, it does not matter what you major in, because you're not going to have any impact in whatever field you have decided to study. If this is history, then that's what you need to do.
If you're smart enough, you don't need to go to college. If you aren't smart enough, maybe you do. But in any case, don't expect to get a job after you graduate with a degree in history. There haven't been many since 1969.
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