History Phd: Is it really worth it?

<p>I'm a history major, in my sophomore year of college. I've been looking at numerous careers post-college, and one of them is a history professor or historian. Is it worth it to get a Phd in History and become a professor? Does it pay well, and what exactly do you get to do? Do you publish a lot, write many books, travel to seminars, etc? All help is greatly appreciated. (Btw, I'm interested in general U.S. History).</p>

<p>Also, would it be better to just get a Master’s in History, or not?</p>

<p>Dont bother with a PhD unless you want to work in academe.</p>

<p>No, a pHD in History is completely worthless. </p>

<p>Careers in academia are extremely competitive and you’re more likely to come out working an entry level job, such as a cashier at Walmart.</p>

<p>If you somehow feel that a pHD in History would be a fulfilling aspect of your life and your family has money to throw around, I wouldn’t see the harm in working toward a degree. </p>

<p>Just be aware of your career prospects and keep your expectations in line.</p>

<p>Is it worth it to get a Phd in History and become a professor?</p>

<p>So first, you have to separate those two things.</p>

<p>The job market in history is <em>abysmal</em>. Many people are finding that once they finish their history PhD, they cannot find a tenure-track position, so they end up teaching adjunct classes for low pay or no benefits - or they do something that they didn’t have to use their degree for. I don’t think it’s all getting down to Wal-Mart cashier level - certainly some history PhDs are doing that, but most aren’t. Even still, few people want to spend 7 years earning a degree they’re not even going to use.</p>

<p>So you have to consider whether it’s worth it for you to earn a PhD in history knowing that chances are quite slim that you’ll get a tenure track position as a professor. They get better if you go to a top history program, but they are extremely competitive.</p>

<p>Now for the second part.</p>

<p>*Does it pay well, and what exactly do you get to do? Do you publish a lot, write many books, travel to seminars, etc? All help is greatly appreciated. (Btw, I’m interested in general U.S. History).</p>

<p>First-year assistant history professors can usually expect to make around $50-60K, depending on their university and the area of the country in which they live. It’s lower in places with lower CoL and salaries, obviously, and higher in urban areas.</p>

<p>History professors do scholarship and research in history, in addition to teaching history courses. You do all of the things you just listed: you will be expected to publish a lot (in history I guess that would include monographs, a few books, and some scholarly articles in historical journals), travel to present at seminars, and participate in the grander discussion of your field. You will also be expected to teach some courses. How many courses you teach will be dependent on the university - if you teach at a top-flight research institution you may only be expected to teach a 1/0 or 1/1 load (that means 1 class in the fall, and 0 or 1 class in the spring). If you teach at a middling research university, maybe 3/2 or 2/2. If you teach at a more teaching heavy institution, you’d be expected to teach a 3/3 or 3/4 load, or higher.</p>

<p>However, the kind and caliber of your research will also change based upon that. While you will be expected to do research at a teaching institution, the kind of research you’d be expected to do will be different than if you were at a Harvard or Yale.</p>

<p>Explore all other options is my first piece of advice. Second, read through American Historical Association’s publications on graduate school and jobs with a history PhD. </p>

<p>US history is the most competitive field. Largely, IMO, I is because so many American students don’t have strong language skills to do a non-US field. You really have to work at your languages to be competitive. Think about why you want to do American history and not any other geographical field. </p>

<p>As for the profession, julliet has the facts right. American historians rarely travel abroad for research and conferences.</p>

<p>My DH wanted to be a history prof. back in the early 70’s. He went to a top PhD program, but saw brilliant students around him graduating and taking one year temporary assignments in tiny rural outposts, if they were able to find jobs at all. (no offense to the rural posters…lol) Academia has always been difficult and very political…that’s something many students don’t understand until they get to the graduate level. Don’t think that just because it’s a university and not a private company that politics don’t exist.</p>

<pre><code>DH quit grad school after he passed his generals exams, with what they call an “all but dissertation”, or an M.A., on the diploma. He’s now making a very good living in business doing something completely unrelated to his major. He still loves history, but he wanted to support a family. Times were tough then, but I think they are even tougher now.
Honestly, the only people that should be going into academia right now, in my humble opinion, are those who truly can’t imagine doing anything else. There are so few jobs, especially in the humanities.
</code></pre>

<p>I got sick of my PhD in Pol Sci in like a semester. I am sticking with it until MPhil level just to have some return on my investment. Oh, and Grad School has fine honies.</p>

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<p>Which makes it all the more imperative that, perhaps even more so than a humanities undergrad degree, a humanities PhD degree should best be pursued at a school with an elite brand name and high-powered alumni network and recruiting base. Qualifying schools would be the Ivies, especially Harvard, but also even those with relatively weaker graduate programs, Stanford, Berkeley, Duke, Chicago, and the like. That way, even if you can’t find a desirable academic position, you can still be competitive for a strategy consulting or - yes - even a finance position. {If Ibanks will hire Harvard history undergrads, why not Harvard history PhD’s?} </p>

<p>You can also use a PhD program as an opportunity to learn marketable skills, even in an ostensibly unmarketable discipline such as history. For example, some history scholars utilize statistical analyses to prove/disprove various hypotheses. If that is the type of research that you perform, then that’s a golden opportunity for you to develop useful and marketable skills with a statistical software package such as R, SAS, or Stata that you can utilize as a fallback career. Nowadays, even an entry-level worker who is SAS-certified can earn a highly respectable salary. </p>

<p>As for whether you should spend time developing such skills as opposed to concentrating on your research in order to obtain an academic position, while I don’t know the history job market well, I would surmise that by year 4-5 of your PhD program, you probably have a decent sense of whether you have a truly legitimate shot on the market or not. If you don’t, then that’s the time to begin developing marketable skills while still finishing your PhD.</p>

<p>Sakky, what a great response!</p>

<p>Instead of discouraging outright a difficult career path that he wants to pursue, teach him to go for it in such a way that there is a viable Plan B so that it would NOT be a waste of time regardless. </p>

<p>Bravo!</p>

<p>There is a really good article online called “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go!” by Thomas Benton. It does not, as I recall, address history in particular. But, in some ways, the market is worse in history. English PhDs can find nontenure track full time jobs teaching the composition requirement, and foreign language PhDs can find nontenure traxk full time jobs teaching introductory language classes; but there is no such equivalent for history. Here is thelink to the article: [Graduate</a> School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go”>Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go)</p>

<p>Sakky’s answer is SO full of errors. S/he is not in the discipline and has no idea what is going on these days. I’m not even going to go into details because I’m not going to go into an endless debate that Sakky seems to like to start around here.</p>

<p>Agree with Juillet except that the 1/0 or 1/1 is reserved for the topmost profs with reps extablished over many years (or decades,) at schools with high endowments. Mid-schools can expect 6 or so classes/year and my friend at a CSU teaches 8/year. Until you have been at it a while, you mostly teach surveys- same material over and over, to a bunch of kids with a variety of intended majors and, in many cases, small or middling comprehension or interest. And, each class needing papers and exams graded, plus all the official school administrative duties (faculty meetings and an expectation to serve on committees.) Then, for tenure and standing in the field, an expectation of profesional productivity. If your employer doesn’t have a grad program, you won’t have these kids to run into at the watercooler, hobnob with, give advice, share ideas, etc.</p>

<p>Sakky is right that the quality of the grad program matters. But, IMO, the background skills that matter (research, including work with primary sources, analysis and high-level writing) all should be developed as an undergrad. The grad years are specific/intensive; you identify your special interest niche and plow forward.</p>

<p>In many respects, it’s your interest niche that makes you marketable, draws attention- but here’s the rub: general? more openings, but there is too much competition. specific? the colleges may not be interested at all in that focus. Most PhDs we know locally teach at 2-3 colleges or teach hs or teach a class or two, but earn their keep at something else.</p>

<p>And, publishing is not a matter of having something to say- it has to be of interest to the field and reflect intense original research.</p>

<p>*Agree with Juillet except that the 1/0 or 1/1 is reserved for the topmost profs with reps extablished over many years (or decades,) at schools with high endowments. *</p>

<p>Not always. I go to Columbia, and here even untenured assistant professors have 1/0 loads. My advisor is an untenured assistant professor who teaches one class in the fall and none in the spring, and I don’t know any untenured assistant professors in my department who teach more than 2 classes a year.</p>

<p>However, I’m not in history - so if you meant more specifically that in <em>history</em> only hotshot full professors have 1/0 or 1/1 loads, then I don’t know anything about that.</p>

<p>@Juillet: those professors are probably research professors who bring in grant money. Besides, Columbia is one of those highly-endowed universities. </p>

<p>Most humanities departments, even at mid-tier colleges and LACs, have a maximum 3/3 teaching load plus university service and graduate advising, even though the official full-time load may be 4/4. Professors in the sciences and social sciences generally teach less than that unless they have abandoned research altogether. It’s unusual for a research professor to teach more than 2/2; those with grant money more likely will have a 1/1 or 1/2 load. Except at the most highly-funded programs, it’s also unusual to have a 1/0 load. </p>

<p>Assistant professors often have a lighter teaching load in their first year (or more) because they are expected to establish themselves in the field, and departments acknowledge that the process takes a lot of time. </p>

<p>All this varies from university to university, of course. Some community colleges have a ridiculously high course load. I have a friend who teaches 6/6 to be full-time.</p>

<p>If Juillet is describing untenured…I’d guess they are part-timers, not covering the rent, possibly with no benefits- and sometimes, no guarantee, year to year. They could be emeriti, yes. But, part-timers. </p>

<p>The concept of “research profs” doesn’t necessarily exist at a LAC. Schools cannot necessarily afford these folks. Nor do they always value supporting a new person with benefits and etc, while they establish themselves. Schools have to have folks to teach the intro surveys and lower level classes. No new person I know was given a lighter load, just because. There are contracts where, every so often, a prof gets a one-course reduction (separate from sabbaticals) - but ime, these are for senior (or at least, established) faculty and not all schools have “contracts” with the faculty.</p>

<p>Assistant professors are not adjunct (part-time) professors. They are tenure-track professors at the beginning of their careers.</p>

<p>There are “asst prof” jobs available that are non-tenure-track.<br>
OP’s question was: is it worth it? And he/she is interested in general US history. My point is, sure, some people get dream deals. There are more recent PhDs in humanities than FT, decent opportunities.</p>

<p>As a reference point, one university I’m familiar with has an official teaching load of 1/1 for the first year. No newly hired assistant professor teaches more than this for his/her first year. Some departments at this university have an <em>unofficial</em> teaching load for newly hired assistant professors of 1/1 for the first <em>two</em> years. If a professor of any level supports a lot of graduate students, the load is usually 1/1. Other professors teach 1/2, 2/2, 2/3, and 3/3, depending on their research commitment. This university is considered just below the top tier for undergraduate, lower for graduate studies.</p>

<p>The new hires at DH’s school are expected to earn their keep, so to speak, hit the boards running, in both teaching and research. To interact with grad students- and possibly have teaching load reduced- it has to be a school with a grad program, in the first place. Most LACs don’t have these. Most schools are reevaluating the whole nature of tenure, keeping sufficient numbers of PT faculty involved, because they are more easily set aside when budgets are tight. And, to get a job at a top school with these modified teaching loads available (while still being decently paid,) you have to be, somehow, worthy. You have to stand head and shoulders above the scores of other applicants- and that’s not always easy to plan.</p>