This is the paper I delivered last Sunday. I am posting it here since the AHA will be taking down precirculated conference papers from their web site in the future.
"Reconsidering the Job Market from the Entry Level"
Let's talk first about the goal of most graduates from history doctoral programs. It should go without saying that the vast majority want to become tenure-track history faculty. Let me describe how difficult this process is before I tell you why the overall goal is impossible. Did you know that only half of the students who entered humanities doctoral programs between 1992-3 and 1994-5 completed their degree within ten years? By comparison, the dropout rate is 10 to 15 percent in business, law, and medicine professional programs. Now let's focus on those who survive their history doctoral program. According to the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF), nearly half of the assistant professors who were hired between 1999 and 2003 had earned their PhD in history five to nine years previous. The average time between graduation and the time they landed their current tenure-track position was 3.3 years. Academic job seekers in history now have to prove themselves worthy to job search committees by spending several years after graduation teaching and publishing. Furthermore, my analysis of NSOPF data shows that only 31 percent of all the individuals who earned a PhD in history between 1966 and 1992 were tenured faculty as of 2003. Some of these doctoral recipients may have left academia by that time, but even the AHA agrees that only about one third of history PhDs will ever achieve tenure. One reason why this is happening is that the overall proportion of college faculty who work without any chance of tenure is now at 65 percent and keeps rising. The academic system is rigged against PhDs in history, and the rest of the humanities for that matter.
The erosion of tenure for history faculty is our next topic. The below chart illustrates, by institution type, changes over time in the proportion of history faculty who work without any chance of tenure. While the overall proportion of non-tenure positions in history has fallen since the 1990s, two-year and private colleges have continued to decrease the proportion of history faculty positions that are eligible for tenure.
If most history PhDs will have no chance to obtain tenure, then full-time academic employment would probably be a nice consolation prize. However, even this possibility is slowly vanishing. According to the NSOPF data, the proportion of history faculty who were part-time employees has mostly increased over time: 34.9 percent in 1992, 43.8 percent in 1998, and then 37.5 percent in 2003. For more details, consult the below chart:
You can see that the proportion of all college faculty who are employed part-time has been increasing a little less than one percent per year on average. Although this change has happened slowly since the early to mid-1980s, the accumulated results appear to be irreversible and unmistakable. Within the next decade, perhaps 55 percent of all college faculty will be in part-time positions. If our field continues to follow these trends, we can expect that by about 2015 or 2020 around half of all history faculty will be part-time employees. Already, colleges are hiring three adjuncts for every one tenure-track professor.
Many of you are likely thinking by this point that history doctoral programs should have produced fewer PhDs over the last few decades. According to this school of thought, we have created an oversupply of history PhDs that has outstripped the demand in colleges and universities for new history faculty. I am no longer certain that this is what happened. During the 1949-50 school year, 4.28 percent of all the doctoral degrees awarded were in history. This proportion dropped considerably in the 1970s and 1980s, rebounded slightly in the 1990s, and then has fallen again since the turn of the century. For a closer look at these numbers, consult the below chart:
The proportion of college faculty who teach history has also fallen over time, from about 2.5 percent in the 1990s (according to NSOPF data) to about 1.5 percent between 2004 and 2006 (according to Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] data). What this means is that structural changes are afoot, marginalizing the humanities within most colleges and universities, and hand wringing over the number of PhDs produced annually by history doctoral programs will do little to stop this transformation.
There is a wide disparity in the United States between where most college students enroll and where most history majors earn their bachelors degrees. Consider the following statistics from the 2006-07 school year. Research universities with very high research activity (like UCLA), which enrolled 11 percent of all undergraduates, awarded 35 percent of all history bachelors degrees. Research universities with high research activity (like BYU), which enrolled 8 percent of all undergraduates, awarded 16 percent of all history bachelors degrees. Doctoral/Research Universities (like Illinois State University), which enrolled 4 percent of all undergraduates, awarded 5 percent of all history bachelors degrees. Master's Colleges and Universities with large programs (like CSU-Fullerton), which enrolled 14 percent of all undergraduates, awarded 24 percent of all history bachelors degrees. Baccalaureate colleges that emphasize the arts & sciences (like Metropolitan State College of Denver), which enrolled 14 percent of all undergraduates, awarded 24 percent of all history bachelors degrees. And this gap has grown over time. During the 1984-85 school year, these five institution types enrolled 47 percent of all undergraduates and awarded 88 percent of all history bachelors degrees. Twenty-two years later, these same schools enrolled only 40 percent of all undergraduates and yet awarded 93 percent of all history bachelors degrees. Another way of looking at this situation is that less-selective schools (i.e., masters colleges and universities with medium programs, masters colleges and universities with small programs, baccalaureate colleges that emphasize diverse fields, associates colleges, and specialized colleges), which enrolled a whopping 60 percent of all undergraduates during 2006-07, awarded a mere 7 percent of all history bachelors degrees. For an illustration of these trends, take a look at the below chart:
If these trends continue, by the 2028-29 school year, these five most-selective institution types will enroll only 34 percent of all undergraduates and award 98 percent of all history bachelors degrees. The slice of the academic pie that belongs to history departments is irreversibly becoming smaller.
Some readers of this essay may feel that recent increases in the proportion of bachelors degrees awarded annually in history will create more jobs for history faculty. There may be some truth to this theory, but the recent increases are actually quite modest when placed in historical perspective:
I believe history was a popular major back in the Sixties because many college students felt like they were living through and making history. The economic prosperity of those years made it even more possible for students to imagine that majoring in history would lead them to gainful employment. This democratic impulse within history was largely lost in the Seventies, especially during the recession of those years. During the Reagan years, Americans regained their faith in traditional national narratives and the proportion of history bachelors degrees increased by almost fifty percent. But there was another factor at work also. The history major became increasingly a favorite of students raised in upper-income families. The spread of this trend can be seen in changes to the college admissions game. Between the early 1960s and early 1980s, less than 2 percent of high school graduates took either AP U.S. History or AP European History. Last year, one out of every six high school students who graduated had taken an AP history exam. In addition to this massive prepping of students for college, the movement towards early admissions at selective colleges since the turn of the century made it easier for students from wealthy families to gain entry to the elite college of their choice. The preference of these students from privileged backgrounds for the history major can be seen in the below chart:
The bottom line is that increasing numbers of history majors at liberal arts college and the most elite universities has provided a temporary boost to the demand for history faculty, but the long-term trend is that American college students at other institutions are vocationally oriented and generally do not much see much value in a history or humanities degree.
You may think that I am overestimating the effects of elitism on the history profession and undergraduate students. If you are in this category, you should consider a few examples from the most elite institutions in this country. At Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, more students major in history than in any other subject. At Yale, one out of every six or seven undergraduates earns a bachelors degree in history. History majors are usually the most white and wealthy students. At these three schools, 46 percent of the students who received bachelors degrees last year were members of racial or ethnic minority groups. Yet only 35 percent of students who earned history bachelors degrees at these schools were minorities. A recent sample of twenty colleges and universities (with extremely large endowments) who have waived tuition for students from low- to moderate-income families supports this picture. Between the 2003-04 and 2006-07 school years, while the number of bachelors degrees earned in history across the nation increased at least 15 percent, these twenty elite schools saw their number of history bachelors recipients decrease by an average of 6 percent. Apparently most of these new students from lower income brackets were raised believing that history was an impractical major. At Harvard, where 25 percent of the student body is now eligible for Pell Grants, the number of history bachelors degrees awarded annually has fallen more than a quarter, from 221 in 2003-04 to 161 in 2006-07. I can't help but wonder whether the plan of incoming presidential administration to make college more affordable and accessible, which with the new G.I. bill will further democratize college campuses, will ultimately increase or decrease the proportion of bachelors degrees awarded annually in history.
If we intend to recover the democratic impulse that gave life to history in the Sixties, we need to stop ignoring structural changes in higher education and taking other history degrees for granted. Consider the follow statistics. During the 1969-70 school year, colleges and universities awarded nearly four bachelors degrees for every one associates degrees they handed out. By the late 1990s, this ratio had shrunk, with only two bachelors degrees being earned for each associates degrees. Because of this shift that has taken place, we can no longer afford to overlook this sector for two-year degrees. For instance, few historians realize that about 75 public two-year colleges in the American West (and almost nowhere else) offer an associates degree in history. If we want to create more full-time history faculty positions, we should be trying to export these programs to other junior colleges across the nation, particularly in the Southeast. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, colleges and universities were awarding around 5,000 masters degrees in history each year. Altogether, about 35,000 individuals earned a masters in history during those tumultuous years. This represented between 2% and 3% of all masters degrees awarded by colleges and universities. Since the turn of the century, the masters degree in history has comprised only 0.5% of the masters degrees awarded annually. What has happened over the last four decades is regrettable. Students used to obtain a masters in history because it was seen as a valuable degree in its own right. These days, almost the only people who earn a masters in history are those who intend to enter doctoral programs. The only institution type that has witnessed an increase in the proportion of masters degrees being awarded in history over the last couple decades are masters colleges and universities with large programs, like the CSU system. Unfortunately, less than a third of these 343 schools currently offer both a bachelors and masters in history. We should be working to convince institutions like Grand Valley State University, which already awards over 100 bachelors degrees in history each year and operates 27 graduate programs, that there is a market for masters degrees in history.
Now that we have officially entered a recession, job seekers in history need to think more about their employment prospects in non-academic fields. An unrealistically high percentage of history PhD students are planning on become college professors. A recent survey found that only 5 to 6 percent of history PhD students believed they would end up working in public history. A survey of history PhDs in the 1990s found that 17 percent were employed by governmental, business, or non-profit agencies or institutions. So we need a paradigm shift. The good news is there are some financial rewards for switching to public history and often a doctorate is not needed. According to the latest reports from the AHA, the median salary for full-time history faculty is between $60,000 and $62,000, depending on whether they work at public or private colleges. The most recent data from the BLS provides an interesting counterpoint. The median salary for the more than 700 historians who are employed within the executive branch of the federal government is $80,000 annually. The median salary for the more than 500 historians who are employed by Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services is $69,000 annually. Apparently working outside of the academy can be more profitable than teaching college classes. And the historians with digital skills who can cross over into computer and research fields will likely receive the most pay. See the below table for more details:
| Some Occupations of Interest to Historians | 2006-07 Salary |
| computer and information systems managers | $102,000 |
| computer and information scientists, research | $94,000 |
| labor relations managers | $89,000 |
| computer software engineers, systems | $85,000 |
| training and development managers | $80,000 |
| computer software engineers, applications | $80,000 |
| operations research analysts | $72,000 |
| computer systems analysts | $70,000 |
| computer programmers | $66,000 |
| database administrators | $65,000 |
| instructional coordinators | $53,000 |
| high school teachers | $49,000 |
| information professionals (librarians) | $49,000 |
| writers and editors | $49,000 |
| news analysts | $47,000 |
| curators | $46,000 |
| R&D in the social sciences and humanities | $43,000 |
| archivists | $41,000 |
| self-enrichment teachers | $40,000 |
| graphic designers | $40,000 |
| book publishing | $35,000 |
| private detectives and investigators | $34,000 |
| museum technicians and conservators | $34,000 |
| workers in advocacy, grantmaking, and civic organizations | $33,000 |
As you can imagine, the jobs that require doctorates generally pay more than those that only require a masters or bachelors degree. I would like to see the AHA collaborate with federal agencies in Washington, D.C. to put on a seminar seminar for recent graduates from history graduate programs who want to retool as public historians. The AHA has already posted some great resources on their web site about careers in public history. I just hope they will do more.
I have another proposal that I hope the AHA will consider as job market for historians becomes more diverse and competitive. The AHA could create a template on their website where members looking for jobs could upload the elements of their CV. Job seekers could also create an online portfolio of things like teaching philosophy, course evaluations, research projects, budget oversight, non-profit service, management experience, and government work on the AHA web site. Lastly, the AHA could make arrangements with a testing center whereby job seekers take a new test that measured things like intellectual curiosity, artistic appreciation, multicultural tolerance, leadership, interpersonal skills, civic engagement, psychological well-being, career goals, life skills, perseverance, and integrity--the kinds of non-cognitive qualities that make a historian successful in the world of work. (This would be the right-brain test that would complement the left-brain GRE test we already use.) Once all of this information was available on the AHA web site, job search committees could look through the CVs and portfolios if their institutions were members of the AHA. A search interface on the AHA web site could allow the search committees to customize their search for job candidates, by selecting a range of weights for the different variables in the CV and portfolios. For instance, junior colleges could place greater emphasis on teaching experience and philosophy, a university could privilege publications, a museum could focus primarily on service and work with the public, and a government agency could look for experience with managing workers and overseeing budgets. Once a search committee developed a list of potential candidates, the AHA could e-mail the selected job seekers to see if they are willing to release their non-cognitive test scores to the search committee. Once this data was assembled, the search committee could decide how much weight to give to the test scores, publications, teaching, research, funding, public service, and so forth. The result would be an impartial ranking of candidates by computer for the search committee. At this point, the search committee could then send out requests for letters of recommendations to the top dozen or so candidates.
Let me conclude with some words about the future. I think many historians will have to embrace digital methods to survive in the job market of the future. Not only is digital humanities becoming a hot topic in academia, but many of the jobs in the coming years will require the ability to find meaningful needles in digital haystacks. Recent articles in the media have predicted that the people with these skills will be called data technologists. Industry will also need parallel programmers who can write code whose work can be divided over multiple computers. These kinds of programmers are almost non-existent right now. With the increase in computing power, full-immersion virtual simulations will become more affordable and commonplace. Historians with digital skills in animation and gaming will be well situated to take advantage of this trend with life-size virtual recreations of past events and places. Lastly, I will mention that semantic engineers are an emerging job category to which historians should be paying attention. These are the individuals who are building the semantic web, which will allow people to search the Internet for concepts rather than just phrases and keywords. This will have direct application to the text mining programs that historians will increasingly use as they work with Google Books and other large textual databases. For more information, see the below table:
| Future Occupations of Interest to Historians | 2012 Salary |
| data technologists | $90,000 to $102,000 |
| semantic engineers | ? |
| parallel programmers | $79,000 to $88,000 |
| simulation engineers | $91,000 to $114,000 |
For those who are new to digital history, I recommend you read the interchange that was published in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of American History. The text is now freely available on the JAH web site.
Here are the concluding questions that I hope our profession will try to answer: How long will we continue to blame students in and graduates of history graduate programs if they don't succeed? Are we denial about the structural changes that have happened in higher education over the last several decades? How long will be persist in doing history that brings us prestige rather creating history that has value in the eyes of undergraduates and the public? Are we content to teach an ever decreasing proportion of college undergraduates? Do we believe that we can expand our associates and masters programs? Are we willing to let tenure-track positions disappear? Will we fight back against the for-profit colleges that started this trend of hiring the cheapest teachers they could find? What will it take to learn the skills of public and digital history? Can we make our type of history relevant to the American public once again?
A Note on Sources: The data for this paper comes from several sources. I drew most of it from the National Center for Education Statistics at nces.ed.gov, particularly the Digest of Education Statistics and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Some of it came from my blog, phdinhistory.blogspot.com. The BLS data came from www.bls.gov. Frank Donoghue's book, The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities, influenced some of my thinking.
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17 comments:
I read your paper beforehand, but was unable to attend that session. Interesting paper but depressing as I try to start a second career as a college teacher. I knew I was in for a substantial paycut, but going from a GS-13 to an adjunct is brutal! At this point I'd be happy with a non-tenure contract position.
Thanks for the comment. I wish my work didn't have that effect on people. What do you think it would take for American society to pay historians what they are worth? Maybe there is a chance for us historians if high school teachers get a pay raise under Obama.
The problem will exist so long as administrators see adjuncts as a way to keep the expense of wages down. What should be either a way to fill temporary slots, or to provide an apprenticeship has become the academic version of jobs that usually include the phrase "do you want fries with that." I love teaching, but I turn 50 years old this term and don't want to spend the rest of my career working for minimum wage!
lots of great analysis here. But I'm not sure I buy the cultural explanation for history's "popularity" in the 60s. The fact is that the raw number of history faculty has increased significantly over this period. What has reduced History's piece of the pie is not a declining "popularity" but rather an explosion in non-liberal arts programs as a proportion of college enrollment. It's not that students who used to be interested in history are choosing something else. It's that students who never would have chosen history in 1965 are now all going to college.
The mismatch that you identify is important, because it means that people who went to the kinds of schools you identified will, as often as not, find themselves teaching at very different kinds of institutions, and teaching very different kinds of students. The evidence for this is the long list of expectations in CC/2 year school job ads--experience teaching a wide variety of students.
I also see here more evidence to support my general contention that the problem of PhD overproduction is a problem of too many from the most prestigious schools, and not the existence of too many lower tier programs. Grads of the Harvards of the world are uniquely unqualified to teach at Random County Community College, and so they all end up fighting amongst themselves for the few jobs available at the AHA. The schools at the top need to stop accepting and producing so many PhDs so as to discourage the kinds of students who would go there, but not a less prestigious institution, from beginning careers in history in the first place.
I arrived here via Tenured Radical. Your ideas are well thought out and provocative. However, I don't understand this part of your conclusion:
"How long will [w]e persist in doing history that brings us prestige rather creating history that has value in the eyes of undergraduates and the public?" Can you please explain? Is this related to your comments about the "elitism" of the History major?
I am skeptical of calls for historians to abandon their professional conversations and primary research in favor of people-pleasing work. No one ever asks astrophysicists, biochemists, or the like to stop being so pretentious, speak the people's language, and explain how their work is "relevant" to the world today. The Malcolm Gladwells of the world can popularize complex academic conversations if they want to, but I think there is a great deal of value in historians' conversations with other professional historians. It may not be value that is readily perceived by the general public, but that's true of every other professional field too. New and complex ideas take time to work themselves out.
Publius: Thanks for the comments. I agree that my cultural explanation needs more evidence. Did you see my
former post that uncovered a correlation between the sales of academic history books and undergraduate history majors? The important point is that the American public votes on whether they like history with their pocketbooks. Back in the Sixties, the average history book sold probably 2,000 copies. Now university presses expect the average history book to sell 200 copies.
I think your argument has some validity at the undergraduate level. After all, the range of two-year programs available to students has vastly expanded since the Sixties. But your argument carries a worrisome assumption. I hear you saying that first-generation college students are more prevalent these days than they were back in the Sixties. That may be true overall, but certainly not for universities. Universities were falling over themselves to recruit students from disadvantaged backgrounds during the Sixties. And it didn't hurt that there were federal dollars available through Upward Bound programs to accomplish just that. What would really help in answering these questions is if we had data on the socioeconomic background of history majors during the Sixties. What we probably need to do is more digging in the predecessor to IPEDS.
Your argument also fails to account for the popularity of the history major at the masters degree level during the Sixties. I can't say for sure, but I doubt the range of masters degree available has changed that much over the last few decades. The question we need to answer is why the history masters degree was a relatively popular during the Sixties and what would it take to recover that segment of the student market. The answer to that question may also help us figure out how to attract a more diverse student body into history undergraduate programs.
I can sympathize with your arguments about the overproduction of history PhDs. But I could actually make the exact opposite argument. Because we have allowed academic history to reach such a low point of relevance for the American public, our salaries have become almost the lowest in the academy. As a consequence, the best and the brightest among today's students are increasingly choosing other fields (besides history) that will yield more fulfilling and financially rewarding careers. Let me give you a concrete example: Yale University. Out of everyone who earns a bachelors degree at Yale, 14 percent will eventually earn a doctorate. Among those who earn a history bachelors degree at Yale, only 8 percent will eventually earn a PhD in history. How would you explain this brain drain in history?
Historiann: You have a wonderful critique. And thanks for catching my typos. ;-)
I agree with you that, by and large, the American public is willing to support science even if they don't understand how it works. However, I think they do so because of the cultural work that science performs in this country. Ever since the cold war, and especially since Sputnik, Americans in general have put their faith in science. To some extent they believed that emphasizing science in the schools was a key to our future security. But more importantly, the American public came to believe that the prosperity and greatness of our nation was linked to our leadership and achievements in science and technology. And as long as scientists continue to deliver results, and the media portrays scientific accomplishments as newsworthy, Americans will continue to support them and buy into the idea of scientific triumphalism. That is how I think science became "relevant" for the average American baby boomer. So I don't think it is a matter of scientists publishing work that will please the American public.
For historians the situation is quite different. We have given the American public tremendous (and some would say transparent) access to our published work in books. There has been no veil of mystery behind which historians could hide their work. Traditionally, average Americans have read our monographs and claimed to clearly understand what we were saying and arguing. As a result, large numbers of Americans grew up with the concept that history was a narrative everyone learned in school and that history books allowed you to relive history or to examine it more closely. But then something happened in the Sixties. Large numbers of baby boomers suddenly discovered that they were active participants in making history. Social movements of that era became proof that collaboration and a commitment to American values like freedom and equality could put your group on the right side of history. It is little wonder that undergraduate and graduate history majors nearly doubled in popularity from the 1950s to the Sixties.
And then many of those hopes and dreams, particularly about the ability of average Americans to change the course of history, were shattered during the recession, Watergate scandal, and final failures in Vietnam of the early- to mid-1970s. With their faith in American greatness and leadership mostly shattered, Americans lost much of their interest in studying the national narrative. To the extent that Americans were still interested in the past, they increasingly turned inward and focused on the history of their own families, local communities, and interest groups. The popular concept of academic historians also changed during this transitional period. If the average American had previously thought of academic historians as wordsmiths and storytellers, the American of the Seventies saw academic historians as anti-conservative, ruthlessly revisionist, and unconcerned with applying the lessons of the past to the issues of the present. And thus the chasm between an interest in history and an interest in the past widened for average Americans.
Americans today are still interested in the past. Their experience with the past is often unmediated through artifacts at museums. They have hobbies that allow them to make their own history. They gather stories about their ancestors. They watch the history channel and attend movies about history in large numbers. I think we have too readily written them off as partners in making history and as consumers of written history.
Academic historians are all too willing to bracket questions about the usefulness or relevance of history to the needs of the current generation. We pursue specialized and narrow historical topics with the thought in the back of our mind that someday, someone will find our study useful. Even worse, we use jargon and theory to talk down to average Americans, when in fact we should be giving them credit for the historical skills they already possess and trying to engage them.
The big question in my mind is whether we can democratize history once again. I am not going to say this will ever be easy. But I think it is something worth fighting for. And I think the American public deserves better from us academic historians. We are in a rare opportunity right now, coming on the heels of a historic election. In getting ourselves out of this recession, the past could provide a lot of valuable lessons for the present. As Americans become more accepting of progressive values, history could help make social justice more of a reality in this country.
Thanks for your elaboration. I don't understand, however, what exactly your vision for what academic historians should be researching and writing about.
I agree with you that there is a gap between the American public's interest in academic history and their interest in the past. But that isn't in my judgment because academic historians write poorly on obscure topics of interest to no one. It's because academic historians have for the most part abandoned the Whig narrative and many of us cast critical eyes on U.S. history, and the American public doesn't want to read the truth about American history. So, it sounds to me like you're advocating a capitulation to lesser-informed people who want to read the same damn stories over and over again, about the great achievements of great White men. That is what the "democratization" of history would be.
To extend the comparison between science and history further: there is of course a great deal of public skepticism and even in some quarters hostility to science and medicine, especially around the subjects of evolution and vaccination. Do you think scientists and physicians should "democratize" their research and capitulate to the magical thinking and bronze-age mythology that fuels anti-vaxers and creationists?
I think the role of researchers and intellectuals--be they historians, biologists, anthropologists, physicians, or whatever--is to report the truth whether or not it's popular with the demos. The people are frequently wrong.
Historiann: You are welcome. I am not inclined to dictate the research agenda for academic historians. But I believe there are still some open-minded historians out there. I can only hope they are willing to listen to controversial ideas and sometimes harsh truths about the future of our field.
I can see why you would think that white people would continue to comprise the majority of our reading and teaching audiences. However, there is a demographic revolution afoot. Did you realize that in 2026 - only 17 years from now - the 18-24 year-old segment of the U.S. population is projected by the U.S. Census Bureau to become minority-majority? Do you really think at that point history professors will still find their college students wanting a triumphal narrative of whitewashed U.S. history? The problem we will face, in my estimation, is the exact opposite of what you anticipate: history professors will still be overwhelmingly white and male and will find themselves increasingly pressured by their diverse students to make their teaching more relevant to and reflective of America's population and past.
I congratulate you on selecting such salient examples for illustrating how you sensibly side with the superiority of science. I think we can agree that often it is lack of education that causes average Americans to take up positions that are antithetical to scientific findings. But before you and I become smug about knowing more than the masses, let me invite you to consider a few more examples that may become relevant for educators and historians over the next few years.
Would you be persuaded by educational researchers who had compiled evidence that the direct instructional method works best for teaching children how to read, even though teachers hate how it turns them into robots?
Would you be willing to accept merit pay as a teacher if behavioral economists could reasonably prove that both good and bad teaching in the classroom could be measured, quantified, and then either rewarded or punished?
Would you support a federal policy that expanded IPEDS with individually-identifiable information about college students and faculty if it could be shown that strategic use of this data would significantly improve student learning outcomes?
Would you resist or dismiss the results of a computerized rankings system that could assess the value of various scholarship in the humanities? What if it learned from the mistakes made in the sciences, incorporated a wide range of criteria important to scholars, expanded the coverage of current citation indices to include scholarship cited in the notes of monographs, and was widely adopted by university administrators?
How far would you be willing to go in making your historical writing read more like a novel? Computer scientists are perfecting an algorithm that predicts, based on its analysis of scripts and plots, whether a movie will succeed at the box office. Would you adopt the recommendations of a similar program if it could make the narrative style of history books better match what readers want? Would you think twice if one of your colleagues followed this route and vastly expanded the sales of his or her next historical monograph?
Let me conclude with a few questions that curiously echo your concluding paragraph: How certain are we that history professors are firmly footed on side of science? How often should we assume that whatever is popular with history professors must more or less be the truth? How many baby boomer history professors will find their views and methods of teaching, research, and writing increasingly outdated in the 21st century? And if the results of scientific inquiry in this country are increasingly being democratized and providing average Americans with what they need and want, in areas like electronic health records and innovations on the Internet, in what position does that leave the history profession in comparison?
Well, the graphs are really pretty! lol
Thanks. I didn't know you read my blog.
Concur in part, dissent in part.
To include community colleges (which you insist on calling 'junior' colleges, as if this were 1930) in figuring percentages of bachelor's degrees granted by institution is odd, to say the least. In most states, community colleges don't offer bachelor's degrees in anything. Yes, it makes the big black line on the graph look impressive, but it's bizarrely misleading.
The assumption, too, that history majors are necessary for history faculty positions is counterfactual. At my cc, we don't have a history 'major,' any more than we have an English 'major.' But we do have a transfer major, we do have gen ed distribution requirements, and we do have a large and thriving history department, complete with full-time tenured (and tenure-track) faculty.
In the cc world, the enrollment trend is toward younger, more traditional students. (They're increasingly priced out of the four-year schools, at least initially.) Those students gravitate much more to the traditional academic disciplines than do adult students, who usually go into job-oriented programs. In other words, history and the other evergreen disciplines are a growth sector at the two-year level. Right now, much of that growth is adjunct, for reasons I've spent the last several years explaining, but over time, money follows enrollments.
All of that said, you're certainly right that many history grad students don't have a clear picture of the political economy of the profession. And it's certainly a good idea to highlight non-academic possibilities.
I just got an email from a buddy who was on a search committee at the AHA. They had over 250 applicants for one position, a job I would have applied for had it been close to home. Ouch.
Should a person who wants to spend their lives engaging in historical narratives and philosophical investigations be teaching history classes? Is it not the requirement of a PhD in history in order to teach a history classes at the college level the problem? Certainly a Masters Degree is all that is needed to teach most college level history courses. The PhD has always been an elitist pursuit. It is only recently, as you point out, in the 1960s that the PhD in history became the venue by which people became college teachers. Is not the whole notion of a PhD in history a bit impractical?
Anon" I suppose we can't get rid of PhDs in history just yet. Who would be left to train the people earning MAs in history?
I had so little feedback and guidance from my committee I might as well have done it by mail. Maybe that is how the MA programs should work. I do not think many PhDs spend a lot of time "training" their MA students. I think most PhDs spend their time working on their publications.
Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.
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