Over 20 years ago when I had applied to the ministry, the suggestion that was made (when advancement into seminary was clearly not in the cards) was to consider going back to school and working towards a Ph.D. in History or Classical Studies and become a professor. The interest was clear to the evaluators; what they felt was needed a different track to becoming a teacher.
It was thus with interest that I read the article "The End of (Academic) History" by Sumantra Maitra, a Ph.D. an associate fellow at the Royal Historical Society. What grabbed my attention the most was a statistic from the article:
" Between 2019 and 2020, 1,799 historians earned their Ph.Ds and only 175 of them are now employed as full-time faculty members (as of 2022)".
Wow. 175 out of 1799. To my not-math brain, that is less than 1 in 10. The article that this statistic is pulled from, "The Ongoing History Crisis" (link is to the introduction) notes one of the major reasons, which is the the shrinking and in some cases closure of history departments.
It brings to mind a discussion around both choosing careers (discussed today) and the future of history (not to be discussed today, although discussed in both articles).
It seems to me there are two items at work here. The first is rather simple fact that there are only X amount of history positions at universities (which are starting to have their own demographic issues). Surely these statistics are known - or if not know when being started, then known during the process.
A Ph.D. can take 8-10 years to achieve by the time that one is done with the course of study. Most Ph.Ds that I have met are very committed to the process; you have to be, to be willing to endure not only the schooling and the writing, but the years spent as a TA or Instructor, the nights and days when your academic peers are out living their lives and you are toiling away. So getting halfway in and suddenly "calling it quits" because of the potential employment would likely be the most difficult thing in the world, if not impossible. Add to that, of course, the human belief that things like that happen to other people, not us.
The second, of course, is the system.
Universities - beyond just their rapidly escalating costs - have little to no long term interest in the success of their graduates beyond college, except for the the potential money they can bring in donations and the potential prestige if they make it big (there are exceptions to that rule of course, but both of my universities paid at best lip service to post-educational employment planning). The important thing is to get the money now, issue the degree, and move students out the door. How universities continue, in good conscious, to ensure that students are financially crippled beyond school without any responsibility on their part is beyond me.
One has to wonder a bit about the staff that enables this as well. Surely - to use this example - History professors are well aware of the fact that employment is not there and/or falling rapidly. I wonder - I have no data, of course - if they are self-policing students as well, suggesting that a 90% unemployment in the field rate is not a great gamble and had they perhaps thought of an alternative course (and, of course, if the students would listen).
I can imagine, only too well, the sense of disappointment such individuals would encounter when the exit the academic world and go to look for employment - not just that first semester after graduation, but the year after year grind as applications continue to go in and polite refusals or no responses at all come in, and what one is "willing to do" becomes broader and broader.
Now take this one field, and multiply it across all majors. To be sure, this does not apply to every major - engineers always seem to be in demand for example, and some hard sciences s well - but truly, how many Ph.Ds in Philosophy, Political Science, Economics, or Art History can be sustained?
In my case, I took a look at my current circumstances at the time - a child newly arrived and the single employed parent at the time - and took a hard pass at the academic route. Instead, I stuck with the career field I was still relatively new in (3 years) but was not the thing I had wanted to do or close to the thing I wanted to do. In my case, just showing up and doing a good job led to other opportunities in the biopharmaceutical field - opportunities which allowed me to build a library (and educate myself) as well as in some cases, to travel where the history had been.
It is not that I gave up on history. I just had to take a different route to study it and in some way, use it in my life.
An interesting post TB, was a History major myself at university and looking for teaching in the public- school systems until Social Security called me in for an interview. Goodbye teaching, hello meeting/dealing with the public all week long.
ReplyDeleteNylon12, it was an interesting article.
DeleteI have had discussions with scientific Ph.Ds in my line of work (science types) and the feedback from many of them is getting to the Ph.D. (including post-doctoral work) was not worth it in terms of what then ended up doing; in some cases, they actively suggested their children do something else.
I had never seen a figure of how many Ph.Ds in a social science like History were employed out of school. That is a shockingly low number. What is more shocking to me is likely the amount of money it cost that 90% that do not teach to get to the point of a degree and no job.
I recommend the overall article as well. It has some interesting thoughts on the future of history as a discipline.
I got an electronics degree from a private college. I was prepared to be an engineering liaison between the design and manufacturing arms of a firm. It didn't go that way. I wound up using my farm skills more than my electronics knowledge. And later, I was self-taught on what I needed to know. The degree just opened the door.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I noticed about the arts degrees is a tendency of some to be there as insulation from the real world. The scholastic realm is safer than the "produce or die" realm. That was a while back. Now, the safety mentality seems to have invaded everywhere. Skills are valued in niche areas, not in the main. Three years ago when we got a new manager, he hired people like him. He's bubbly, socially aware, and rainbow oriented. Our work suffered as a result. Technical skills are important, no just having the proper social "outlook". I guess he thought our skill set wasn't of primary importance.
Saying all that, I am glad I did the work to get the degree. I found I was capable of more than I thought I was. And I am a more competent autodidact as a result. Not to mention a well rounded student. Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, The Scarlet Letter, etc finally made sense to me in college. "This Nicholas anon leet fle a fart..." First question on the English Literature quiz was "Yes or No" did you read the entire assignment. Easy 10 points. Especially if Nicholas was blowing kisses....
STxAR - It is a great deal about the fact that simply having the degree opens doors - although what is more than a little concerning is that much as once a high school degree opened doors, the degree type has only gotten higher and higher: first it was a B.A. or B.S., now it has moved to M.A or M.S. I suspect it cannot reach Ph.D. simply because of the fact that is too much specialization.
DeleteI suspect in the current upcoming economic contraction, what you can do will (again) matter a great deal more than what you believe.
I ponder if the slow death of history teaching is due to so many writing books about their take on history. It seemed when I was younger, books on history were few and mostly factual. These days, historical books abound and even top best seller lists and as best, can be considered one person's interpretation of history.
ReplyDeleteI am reminded of the roommate of one of my best friends in college. The roommate's name was Dan and he was on his way to getting a masters (I think) in history and said he would like to pursue a PHD. When I asked him where he would like to teach when it was all over, he surprised me by saying he absolutely hated teaching and had no plans to ever teach history. He couldn't elaborate on what he could see himself doing and to me it just seemed like a colossal waste of time and money and I may have said something similar in a more tactful fashion. Flash forward about ten years later when I needed a last minute item and swung into a Walmart near my destination. Lo and behold, there was Dan working the checkout station. He didn't say anything nor did I, but I'm guessing we were both remembering that conversation way back when.
Ed, it is a real problem. Part of it is, I suppose, the "publish or perish" paradigm that currently exists. The other part is, I would suggest (and probably worth another post) our own fault. Rather than than read the original history itself, we have become content with reading people's interpretation or even "feelings" about history. History is less about what happened then and much more about how we interpret what happened now.
DeleteWhat an interesting story. To be fair, I had little idea what I would do when I graduated with my B.A, and a small idea of what I would do when I graduated with my M.A. What an awkward situation that must have presented. But I suspect there are many "Dans" out there, who pursued it to its logical(?) conclusion without really understanding why they were doing it or what they would do after.
I have always treasured my classical liberal arts education, BA in Philosophy 1976. But I have always said in the same breath that it took three more years of part time science courses, while working full time, to turn it into a degree to enable my registry in medical technology.
ReplyDeleteI still recall an amusing conversation in my senior year, when the dean called me into his office to make sure I understood that pursuing a PhD in Philosophy would mean 100 applicants for every position available. He did admit that my BA would be an excellent pre-law degree, and the same could be said for History as a major. When a nephew was finishing his BA in History, we discussed the idea that he could answer the question of "What good is it?" with the reply "I can read, write, and think. I can analyze what I've read, and make use of it as I wish."
Not mentioned explicitly in the linked article is the years of productive employment lost in pursuit of vaunted PhD. Ten or so years of starvation wage graduate stipends is hard to justify if the end result is unemployable.
Greg - My B.A. is in Political Science, which really only leads to one of two "natural" careers: Law or politics. I really had an interest in neither of those fields, but vastly enjoyed the array of history, geography, economics, literature, and (yes) political theory that went into such a degree. Those two career choices were, actually, limiting. What it did give me - to your nephew's point - was the ability to synthesize multiple streams of information, understand cause and effect, think, and write, all of which have served me well over the years.
DeleteThe lost wages and what accompanies them are, as you say, very relevant things that I suspect are not truly discussed. While those first years out of college may not be the highest earning of my career, they certainly set me up for the years following.
PhD folks try to convince bright students to PhD because that's all they know.
ReplyDeleteJohn, I really wonder if that is part of it too. I wonder why we do not dwell more on the practicality that such degrees might offer to the "real world" instead of just "teach".
DeleteI remember years ago when The Actor worked with the Beijing Opera as part of his MFA, he commented that it was nice to work with a culture where being an "intellectual" was a treasured and valued thing. Not true here: The only "intellectuals" are in universities and think tanks; the rest of us are just a mob of plebs, no matter what our education or interests or background.