New data from the American Historical Association confirm what historians on the job market during the last academic year already know: Landing an interview was tough, and landing a job was even tougher.
In 2008-9 the number of job advertisements in the association’s magazine, Perspectives on History, fell 23.8 percent from a year earlier to 806 openings—the fewest positions advertised in a decade.
The decline in jobs wasn’t the worst of it, though. The association also found in a separate survey of 338 advertisers that about 15 percent of the openings listed were canceled after they were advertised.
The report, prepared by Robert B. Townsend, the association’s assistant director for research and publications, was released in advance of the association’s 124th annual meeting, which begins January 7 in San Diego. The report’s overall outlook for historians—they face one of the most difficult academic job markets in 15 years—mirrors that of English and language scholars whose dim job prospects were recently detailed by the Modern Language Association.
More Supply Than Demand
While the history association uses its job listings to measure the health of the market for historians, it also tracks the number of Ph.D.'s awarded in history to determine just how much supply is outstripping demand. In 2008-9, the number of new history Ph.D.'s increased 17 percent to 869. But the pool of history job seekers in the last academic year was actually about 1,100 when students who came from departments in related fields, such as American Studies, are included, the report said. The resulting gap between the number of would-be professors versus new jobs is the largest “since the job crisis of the mid-1990s,” Mr. Townsend wrote.
Competition was tougher in some fields than in others. For instance, U.S. history openings had an average of 94 applicants per position last academic year, up from 76 the previous year. European history openings had an average of 80 applicants, up from about 76 applicants last year.
Like other disciplines, the history job market is not immune to the impact of the growing use of part-time faculty members. However, the report notes that adjuncts aren’t what is causing historians to come up short in their quest to join the professoriate. Ultimately, there are too many newly minted Ph.D.'s in history.
“The primary problem today, as it was a decade ago, seems to lie on the supply side of the market,” Mr. Townsend wrote.
Meanwhile, the association reports that job ads for the current academic year are at about one-third of what they were this time last year.
“Until programs reduce the number of students … and revise the culture of history doctoral training, the sense of crisis in the job market for history Ph.D.'s seems only likely to grow worse for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Townsend wrote.