From Problems to Solutions: Recruiting, Training, and Placing History PhDs in Non-Faculty Careers
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This document contains data on history PhD programs and career outcomes from 1970-2013. It shows that while the number of history PhDs awarded has increased substantially, academic job openings have remained relatively flat. As a result, fewer than half of new PhDs now enter tenure-track academic jobs. The document also presents data showing the median time spent in history PhD programs has increased in recent years. It analyzes PhD employment outcomes by field of specialization and institution type, finding most history PhDs take jobs outside of academia.
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From Problems to Solutions: Recruiting, Training, and Placing History PhDs in Non-Faculty Careers
- 1. From Problems to Solutions: Recruiting, Training, and Placing History PhDs in Non-Faculty Careers American Historical Association January 4, 2015
- 2. Number of New History PhDs and Advertised Job Openings, 1970–71 to 2012–13 AHA Job Ads History PhDs 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1973–74 1977–78 1981–82 1985–86 1989–90 1993–94 1997–98 2001–02 2005–06 2009-10 2013-14
- 3. AHA Job Ads History as % of All Degrees 0.0% 0.5% 1.0% 1.5% 2.0% 2.5% 3.0% 3.5% 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 AllUndergradDegrees JobOpenings Alignment of Jobs and Undergraduate Students
- 4. AHA Job Ads Average Age 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 AverageAge JobOpenings Alignment of Jobs and Demographics
- 5. History PhDs and Departments, 1901 to 2010 PhDs Departments 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 1901-10 1911-20 1921-30 1931-40 1941-50 1951-60 1961-70 1971-80 1981-90 1991- 2000 2001-10 Departments PhDRecipients
- 6. Average Number of Applications to PhD Programs in Conference, 2007 and 2012 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 CIC Schools Ivy League schools Pac12 Schools SEC schools 2007 2012
- 7. Average Number of Matriculations into PhD Programs in Conference, 2007 and 2012 0 5 10 15 20 25 CIC Ivy Pac12 SEC 2007 2012
- 8. Median Number of Years to PhD, by Field, 2003 to 2012 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 YearsinProgram History Humanities Social sciences Physical sciences Humanities Indicators, 2014 · American Academy of Arts & Sciences
- 9. Median Number of Years Spent in Phase of Doctoral Studies 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Humanities Engineering Life Sciences Physical Sciences Social Sciences All Fields Years Courses/Exams Dissertation Humanities Indicators, 2014 · American Academy of Arts & Sciences '04 '06 '08 '10 '12 All Fields '04 '06 '08 '10 '12 Social Sciences '04 '06 '08 '10 '12 Physical Sciences '04 '06 '08 '10 '12 Life Sciences '04 '06 '08 '10 '12 Humanities
- 10. Institutional Priorities in Preparation of PhD Students, 2001 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Research Universities Other 4-Year Colleges Historical Societies/Sites Government Business High Priority Moderate Low/ Not a Priority
- 11. Areas of Employment for All History PhDs, 2013 2-Year Non-tenure Track 3.1% 2-Year Tenure Track 2.4% 4-Year Non-tenure Track 14.7% 4-Year Tenure Track 50.6% Other Employment 24.2% Retired 1.1% Deceased 1.1% Not found 2.8%
- 12. Field Specializations of Jobs and PhDs, 2012 and 2013 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 Africa Asia Latin America Middle East Europe North America Junior Faculty Openings, 2012-13 New PhDs, 2011-12
- 13. Employment of History PhDs by Field Specialization, 2013 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Research Univ. 4-Year 2-Year K-12 Other (Business/Gov't) Public History Africa Asia Latin America Europe North America
Editor's Notes
- Among other problems, the extended time to degree tends to make it very difficult for a department to act flexibly in response to fluctuations on the academic job market. In my time series showing the relationship between AHA job ads and history PhDs, there were very few years in which more jobs were advertised than PhDs—which seems like reason enough to take a more expansive approach in the preparation of doctoral students. What is perhaps most notable on this graph is that even with the rise and fall in jobs over the past 15 years, the number of PhDs since the late 1990s has been fairly consistent at about 1,000 each year.
- The most obvious factor that is cited is the play a significant role, is the number of undergraduate students in history that require teaching. As you can see looking simply at the number of majors is not a perfect
- A lot of factors play into the job market for history PhDs, but we can look ahead and see one of the variables pretty clearly. On this chart, I’ve plotted the average age of the faculty at various points in relation to the AHA’s job ads. As you can see, the peak in job advertisements that occurred in the early 2000s corresponded to a wave in the average age that peaked near 60 in 2001. That demographic wave has now subsided, and the average age had fallen to the lowest level in my records as of 2012. Looking ahead, it seems likely that retirements from history departments will remain relatively low for the next decade, so in the absence of other factors, such as a sharp rise in majors, the number of openings is likely to remain at a fairly low ebb for some years to come.
- Let’s step back and take a look at the big picture. As you can see that the number of PhDs conferred in any given decade has risen and fallen, usually about five to ten years after the corresponding shifts in the job market. But the number of programs has moved inexorably upward regardless of the number of jobs and degrees being conferred. While a handful of programs tend to close in years with bad job markets, a larger number of programs invariably make the case that their departments could serve a distinct niche—that can be state need, or a specialization in Latin American history or digital history.
- To provide a closer visualization to your situation, I clustered the findings of the data into the conferences. In part because it provides useful regional comparisons. As you can see, the CIC schools generally fit midway between the Ivy league and the flagship schools that comprise the Pac 12 and SEC schools.
- Despite the increase in the number of applications, the average number of students matriculating into programs was lower in 2012 than in 2007, as departments have been responding by reducing admissions. I think it remains to be seen how the departments respond to the recent declines in applications, since the threshold number of students necessary to maintain a functioning program remains uncertain.
- As you can see, history consistently takes longer than any other discipline in the time doctoral students remain in their programs. I can’t explain why the time actually grew shorter during the course of the recession, but I hope this suggests just challenging it will be to get the average time to degree down to five years as some have proposed.
- I do not have a specific breakdown for history, but you can see part of the challenge for anyone trying to both cut time to degree and expand the career options for students in the humanities. The fields are pretty consistent in the time spent at the dissertation stage—at a median of three years—with the difference occurring at the coursework stage. I think departments can do a lot to make those four years more effective in preparing students for a range of career options—particularly by aligning the testing of content knowledge with the imparting of new skills—but it raises an additional challenge for faculty as well as students.
- It will come as no surprise, but history doctoral programs focus much of their training on academic jobs. And these percentages are generally quite similar in surveys of doctoral students about their priorities for work after the PhD, with about 70 percent focusing in on academic employment. I think the students bring many of these expectations in with them before they even start in the program, but as you can see, PhD programs do little to adjust this sense of priorities. And to some extent the numbers match the employment outcomes quite closely—even as this suggests a problem for the 25 percent of the sample who took employment outside of academia, and the 20-odd percent who are employed in adjunct positions.
- As my recent report with Maren Wood demonstrated, two-thirds of all history PhDs conferred between 1998 and 2009 went on to jobs at four-year colleges and universities, and another 5.5% got jobs at two-year colleges. But of course the numbers look rather different when you start to break them down by some of the qualitative aspects of academic employment, such as the proportion on and off the tenure track. In a study I am now working on for the Academy about the distribution of faculty in humanities departments, one of the persistent questions has been why people would choose to take and linger on in these terribly underpaid and underappreciated positions. Many factors come into play, such as geographic mobility and other life choices, but a significant factor is in the expectations that are there from the beginning of graduate training.
- In the end, these disparities are hardly surprising, as the gap between the number of PhDs and the number of academic jobs is quite pronounced in a number of fields—as you can see here from the latest jobs report—the gap between academic jobs and new PhDs in U.S. history is almost 2 to 1. We do not have any data to suggest that the 70 percent of history PhDs aspiring to academic jobs is evenly distributed across the disciplines. In my own experience, as someone who dropped out of a European history PhD and back in a decade later for a PhD in U.S. history, I suspect that U.S. history PhDs include a disproportionate number of PhDs who are back in for job reasons outside of academia. That seems like an area that PhD programs should be aware of, and consider in the organization of their programs.
- The complexity about training expands when we shift the picture out to factor in the fields of specialization of the PhD recipients. As you can see, Americanists are less likely to wind up in 4-year academic institutions of either type—and are more evenly distributed across the major employment categories outside academia, which suggests the need for some further consideration and analysis of the types of job preparation in particular fields of specialization. And what this does not show, is that specialists in American and European history are also more likely to wind up in adjunct faculty positions, since the ratio of PhDs to jobs is the most out of balance. Notably, only a quarter of the PhDs are finding jobs of any sort in research universities. From most of our research, it appears that most programs focus their training on preparing their students to research, critically analyse primary and secondary source materials, and write books. Preparation for the sorts of academic jobs that they will take up at most academic institutions—generally involving a significant amount of teaching—is treated haphazardly at best. And training for jobs outside of academia, even those involving a significant amount of historical research—as in public history—is similarly accidental.