4 ms·
> The poor job prospects for history PhDs in particular and humanities PhDs in general for literally years. I know I've read about history tenure prospects 10+
by bachmeier 5y ago
> The poor job prospects for history PhDs in particular and humanities PhDs in general for literally years. I know I've read about history tenure prospects 10+ years ago.
In 1996, I was talking to a history professor about going to grad school. I was probably going to go to grad school in economics, but I wanted to make sure I checked out all my options, so I was also looking at some humanities fields. His answer was simply to not give any consideration to grad school in the humanities. It was very difficult to get a job, and if you did you probably wouldn't want to live there, and if you got lucky on the first two, you'd be broke your whole life.
I've seen humanities PhD's claim the job market died with the Great Recession. No, the job market for humanities has been terrible for decades. Maybe it's gone from terrible to something even worse, but it's been a bad idea to go to grad school in the humanities for decades.
- soco 5y agoI have no idea about the field so I am curious, was the job market for humanities ever better? I mean in numbers, maybe comparing with the number of graduates...
- cfmcdonald 5y agoYes, in the 1960s. Universities were expanding rapidly to respond to the influx of baby boomers, and humanities majors were much more popular, so it was relatively easy to get hired.[0] It's pretty much been varying degrees of bad since then, but as the first chart in [1] shows, it got a lot worse after 2008. [0]: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/april-1997/precedents-the-job-crisis-of-the-1970s https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/pers... [1]: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/february-2016/the-troubled-academic-job-market-for-history https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/pers...
- bachmeier 5y agoWithin the field of history, the graph at the beginning of this post from the AHA shows that the 1970s was an absolutely terrible decade: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2010/a-grim-year-on-the-academic-job-market-for-historians https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/pers... What happened was a big drop in the number of new PhDs. That is why the 1980s and early 1990s might have had okay job markets. By about 1991/1992 the job market was once again saturated.