A new study conducted for the American Historical Association tracked the job placements of recent history Ph.D.'s and found that a little more than half of them work on the tenure track at either two- or four-year colleges, while nearly a quarter have found jobs outside of the professoriate.
The analysis of where 2,500 history Ph.D.'s were employed in the spring of 2013 also highlights what has been a key talking point for the association in recent years: A Ph.D. in history can be more than just a gateway to a faculty appointment. Among the positions held by the group studied are: archivist, foreign-service officer, lawyer, nonprofit analyst, pastor, and schoolteacher.
“These are good, middle-class jobs that clearly use the skill set gained in a Ph.D. program,” says L. Maren Wood, founder and lead researcher of a small education-consulting firm, Lilli Research Group, that tracked down the former graduate students, who earned their degrees from 1998 to 2009. “People are using their degrees.”
The study also documents how various factors can affect a person’s employment opportunities. Scholars with certain specialties within the discipline were more likely to land on the tenure track than were others. For example, specialists in European history and the Middle East and the Islamic world were among those with the best record of landing tenure-track jobs at four-year institutions. About 52 percent of European history Ph.D.'s in the study, and roughly two out of three Middle East or Islamic-world scholars in the study were in such positions. That compares with about 44 percent of professors specializing in North American history.
Where You Go Matters
Another career booster, according to the study, is attendance at a top-ranked institution. Almost 60 percent of graduates from programs ranked in the top tier by the National Research Council held positions on the tenure track, compared with about 42 percent of those from the third tier or lower.
Yet the study cautions that many variables come into play during a job search. “Earning a Ph.D. from a particular institution or in a particular field of specialization,” the study says, “neither guarantees success nor proves an insurmountable barrier to securing a tenured faculty position.”
Whether a job candidate is able to move to where job openings exist is key, the study suggests. Most faculty members who held nontenure-track or administrative jobs were working in the same region where they attended graduate school.
Meanwhile, the study also provides a look at how the academic job market has shifted toward growing numbers of scholars landing nontenure-track positions. Of the cohort who earned their Ph.D.'s from 1998 to 2001, about 14 percent worked in faculty jobs off the tenure track. That number grew to 25.6 percent among those who earned a Ph.D. between 2006 and 2009, a time period that included the after-effects of the recession.
“After so many years of just shooting in the dark to get numbers like this, it was really exciting to actually get them,” said Robert B. Townsend, a former deputy director of the American Historical Association, who now directs the Washington office of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “Hopefully, the AHA can find out more about what choices people made that led them to take the jobs that they did.”
The study is meant, in part, to help prospective and current graduate students, as well as doctoral programs, have a broader view of career possibilities for historians. Ms. Wood, who has a Ph.D. in history, says she hopes the history association’s placement data will also spur individual history departments to work with the association to conduct their own surveys.