<p>But do you guys think there are fields in the humanities that are clearly relevant and will address contemporary issues in the next few decades? How about Middle Eastern studies? East Asian studies? With all this globalization talk, isn't there at least some interest in new language and cultural studies? This question has no personal bearing on me, but I wanted to see if the graduate school prospects out there really think humanities education is ultimately going down. </p>
<p>In other words, if someone wants to enter academia in humanities research, where's a good place to be?</p>
<p>Luckily, I’m a field where people argue over whether it’s social science or humanities (history). So I avoid the whole humanities field talk because historians are still in demand.</p>
<p>Humanities do need to get some restructuring. But I think it’s up to the students to figure out how to make the most of their humanities majors as long they’re learning how to think, read, and write critically. But for the PhD… it’s about love, not money. SOmeone’s gotta teach once those older professors are gone.</p>
<p>i’m a middle eastern and north african studies major at UCLA going to UChicago for an MA in Middle East Studies…and trust me on this, people who know about the ME or who know a ME language are in high demand. I was approached with job offers and some (namely govt peeps) were so insistent that they wanted me to forget about grad school and just come work for them right out of my BA. It’s one of the only humanities majors, i think, that is recession proof–especially in light of the US’s interests and involvement in the area. </p>
<p>I’m definitely not worried about finding a job after i graduate.</p>
<p>Classics! We need more people to work on all those stuff that’s coming out of Herculaneum and the tons more underneath the villa. It’s too slow right now and I can’t wait!</p>
<p>psych_- Problem is that history departments are still pretty orthodox in their views that their PhD students must be professors. The AHA (American Historical Association) has been criticizing PhD programs for not training their PhD students to become “broad” historians. PhD students come in the program thinking they’re only going to become professors and don’t think about other options out there. Savvy advisors encourage their students to think beyond the academia.</p>
<p>There are jobs in museums, historical societies, government, law, etc for historians to do all the research crap work. It’s just a matter of how willing people with PhDs are to give up their independence to do research work for other people. For example, if someone was to be hired for a position in Congress but has research interests in 20th century US labor movements, they won’t get to do much work on the labor movements but more on the legislative system. Though that might include some memos with labor organizations… not the same as having total control of your research.</p>
<p>historians are in high demand. history professors, however, are not. many within the humanities look at people taking jobs outside of academia as a sign of failure, and that’s probably the worst way to look at life after the PhD, both for academics and for the students they’re training. they act like it’s shameful to not slave away as an adjunct for 10 years, hoping to finally land a tenure-track position somewhere and finally start making over 30K a year at the age of 38.</p>
<p>historians can often get better paying (and less rigorous) work as a historical researcher than as a tenure-track professor, and when they go home in the evenings and on weekends, there’s no more work to do. there’s no papers to grade, no courses to plan, no stack of books to read by the next week. it’s kind of nice, actually.</p>
<p>also, in terms of number of PhDs vs number of tenure-track jobs available, it’s important to note that for historians, subfield matters A LOT. the AHA has data posted on this that goes back a few decades, i think, and over the last 5-10 years, the number of PhDs in US history or european history vastly outweighs the number of jobs available for US or european historians, sometimes by 10 to 1. for asia, africa, and latin america, however, the number of PhDs conferred seems to be about equal to the number of positions available for professors of those subfields.</p>
<p>yet another person doing modern german history is going to have a really hard time competing for jobs, but someone studying 20th century iran or modern brazil is gonna get snapped up much more easily.</p>