Before anyone else chimes in, I just want to parrot the thoughts of early medieval historian Guy Halsall, in stating that though history is helpful in learning how the world came to be the way it is, it is NOT for drawing lessons as to where we are going.

It's no more a scry for the future than a magic 8 ball giving ambiguous answers that can be interpreted both ways. Much like where the stock market is going to go, narrative reasons are applied after the fact, once better information and hindsight is gathered, bearing in mind that this too is still a limitation.

While the present is unfolding into the future, we can only grasp at the darkness of the incomplete. One could argue, we're doing that with our pasts as well.

History is by no means a necessity, any more than the study of another language, literature, art, music, philosophy, the sciences, or much more than basic mathematics is a necessity. There is no reason the abstract individual should need to study history. In a practical sense a society is founded upon shared identity, of which shared history usually forms a major part. This shared historical identity needn't originate in the study of history, it can form part of popular culture or national mythology. It might mean that a study of history can break the individual's ability to share a national identity as they can discern between mythos, propaganda, and historical fact.

The study of history is not reading books and memorising dates, places, and persons. It is not committing a narrative to heart, or simply arming oneself with mere information to hammer at the chinks in the armour of national identity. What researchers, and good students, do is apply analytical and critical models to data, whether quantitative or qualitative, and create reports detailing their findings and further implications. Students of history should be using their topic to sharpen those analytical skills, develop their research methods, and finally (perhaps most importantly) present the fruits of the labour in some manner. Without this final stage the other parts are essentially without supervision. It's akin to the artist never sharing his pieces, or the physicist his theorems. They might be the best, or worst, in the field but no one will know and the author cannot know with certainty. It is part of the learning process, and not one that can be achieved by reading but never writing.

It seems the US has lost sight of the fact that a university education is not about preparing a workforce for entry-level roles. A graduate does not need to have studied accountancy to become a good accountant, nor marketing to become a marketer. The study of a subject equips the student with knowledge that is not directly applicable in every environment, but this does not mean that the processes that underwrite that knowledge are not flexible and pluralistic in practice.