January 2, 2008

For Some Historians, More Jobs to Go Around

The American Historical Association estimates that colleges in the United States awarded about 940 history doctorates in 2006-7, slightly fewer than in the previous year. But those newly minted Ph.D.’s are expected to be outnumbered — for the third year in a row — by the job openings in their discipline, according to a new report by Robert B. Townsend, the association’s assistant director for research and publications.

The report was released in advance of the association’s annual meeting, which of course includes many job interviews. The meeting runs tomorrow through Sunday in Washington.

The association’s magazine, Perspectives, lists about 1,030 new history jobs, a tally that the group uses to measure the health of the history job market. However, more jobs don’t always translate into more opportunities for all.

The data show that, in some specialties, there are too many would-be professors to go around. And in others, there aren’t enough. In American history, for instance, job listings were one-third less than the number of new doctorates awarded in the year before. And in Asian and African history, the number of job openings outstripped the supply of new professors, the report says.

However, Mr. Townsend wrote, specialists in fields “with a severe imbalance” could be good fits for open positions or they could find work outside of academe. —Audrey Williams June

Comments

1. As we in the field are painfully aware, the problem is even more severe in American history than this survey would indicate, because past years of surplus Ph.D. production mean that the market is further glutted with excess Ph.D.s. This goes back ten or fifteen or more years now. And it is at its very worst in twentieth-century U.S. history (which according to AHA data consistently rates as the most competitive field in the business). For some reason — probably simply the innate interest in the recent American past among grad students — people keep pouring into the field beyond what is economically rational, given job prospects.

   — Christopher Phelps    Jan 2, 03:30 PM    #

2. Sooner or later, Wall Street will wake up to the fact that past is, indeed, the prologue. The glut will be history. Considering the fact that the armed forces already woke up to the fact that it may be better for their officers to know Vegetius than marketing, the new corporate epiphany is probably not long in coming.

   — Dag von Lubitz    Jan 2, 04:57 PM    #

3. Remember, though, that a Ph.D. has a short shelf-life in the academic job market. Few search committees will evince any interest in the holder of a doctorate of more than two or three years’ standing, unless he or she has (i) retained some ongoing connection with the profession, at the very least through adjuncting; and (b) continued to publish at the rate that would be considered appropriate for somebody in a full-time academic position. In reality, the 2007 Ph.D.s are competing only with their own peers and with the comparatively small number of 2005 and 2006 graduates who have managed to “freeze” their credentials by obtaining fixed-term posts.

   — Gustave    Jan 2, 05:23 PM    #

4. Gustave’s point is true as far as it goes—small, teaching colleges (how I hate that condescending term) hire later, and hire more of the unpublished Ph.D.s than research institutions. While the data here is interesting, if one’s career is truly to teach, there is more hope than these numbers suggest.

   — History Professor    Jan 2, 05:52 PM    #

5. Any news is good news for history Ph. D.‘s. I received mine in 1965 from George Washington and recall the wide variety of offers we all received. So we were along the lucky ones. But that changed very quickly in the 70s. Since then there have been very few good years, yet grad schools keep churing them out. Do they not have an obligation to their students to tell them the truth? They rarely do. We all love history and that why we study it in such detail, but students also want jobs in the field for which they are prepared and that’s no sin.

   — Gus Mellander    Jan 3, 07:19 AM    #

6. As a history ABD, I can’t say that these numbers make me feel particularly optimistic. There is still a glut of PhDs being produced every year, with a long-term trend towards lower-paying, impermanent lectureship and part-time positions. If the numbers of new PhDs are starting to decline relative to the number of open positions, it is most likely because potential candidates for history PhD programs are choosing other options.

   — madame smartypants    Jan 3, 12:44 PM    #

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