Caveat: I have a PhD, but history is not my field. Most of what I know comes from talking to people in that field.
That said…history is one of THE most impacted fields in academia. It’s probably third only to English literature and the modern foreign languages. There are many times over the number of PhDs in history as there are tenure-track positions to hire them. It is to the point that even community colleges can hire PhDs in history, because of the glut of them. If you want to be a history professor, not only do you have to be willing to move across the country for a PhD; you need to be willing to move anywhere in the country for a tenure-track job. If you are willing to move out of the country, all the better! (seriously: some acquaintances have taken positions in Canada and Australia.)
This is especially true in American history, and 19th century American history is a particularly popular field if I understand it. Native American history is good; it appears these days that if you can teach Latino/Chicano or African American history, you have better prospects. MANY of the job ads request people with this kind of experience. For an idea, you can check out the history jobs wiki (http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/North_American_History_2014-15). Not all of the jobs in the field end up here, but a fairly large proportion do, I think. Note that even the positions in “less desirable” areas of the country (rural areas, particularly in the Midwest or South) can get 200-300 applications for one position. Positions at top-tier colleges and universities and/or in “more desirable” areas (the coasts, urban or suburban areas) can be even more competitive.
A few notes:
-Your national honor society membership doesn’t matter on the graduate level, with the exception of Phi Beta Kappa if you are a member. What matters is your experience in scholarship of history, your writing sample, and your scholarly fit with departments. Also, do you have proficiency in a foreign language? The vast majority of PhD programs in history will require you to demonstrate reading proficiency in a foreign language (sometimes two) by the end of your first or second year in the PhD program. To ensure this, many programs will only accept students who already have demonstrated intermediate proficiency in an appropriate language by the time of application. What that language is varies; I think it depends on your field. Given your interest in American history, it might be French or German. (It’s whatever is relevant to the field that allows you to read scholarship in that area.)
-Because history is such an impacted field, it is imperative that you select the best program that you can get into. Students from top programs are much more likely to get jobs after graduation than students from low-tier programs. I don’t mean by absolute rankings, but I mean for your subfield and interests (although rankings do come into play here). You can take a look at the National Research Council’s rankings of history programs to get a rough idea of where the best programs are in history, and check out webpages to get ideas about the subfields that are there, and start to formulate the best places to study what you want. But you really should be willing to go anywhere; the best programs tend to be concentrated in the Northeast or in California.
-The average time to degree for a history PhD is something like 8 or 10 years. That is because in addition to learning languages and conducting their own scholarship, history PhD students also assist professors in teaching, or in some cases teach independently, sections of undergraduate history classes. Teaching is lovely! It is also very time-consuming, and it doesn’t do anything to help you towards your graduation requirements. I think it is possible to finish more quickly - Columbia says that the majority of their students take 6-7 years to finish, but that only a very few finish in less than that, and a considerable amount take longer. Then, many history PhDs spend a few years post-PhD working as a visiting assistant professor or postdoc (if they are lucky) or an adjunct professor (if they are not).
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I’m not trying to discourage you from getting a PhD in history. Just laying out the facts.
So my advice is: do a PhD in history if:
- you really love historical scholarship, and the idea of spending 6-10 years immersed in some deep obscure historical question excites you.
- The idea of spending your entire 20s, and possibly the early part of your 30s, making around $25,000 a year is okay to you.
- you are willing to move virtually anywhere in the country so that you can go to the best program possible, so as to enhance your chances of getting a job at the end.
- this is the most important part: you are willing to do all of those things knowing that chances are quite good that you won’t get a job as a professor at the end - or any job that requires a PhD in history.
And as a supplement, to chase the academic career only if:
- you are willing to move anywhere in the country to pursue it, or alternatively, you are absolutely prepared to spearhead a diverse job search near the end of your program in which you simultaneously search for academic and non-academic jobs in areas in which you are willing to live.
And if you are prepared to do the second half of #5, then in addition to doing all of the things you need to do to get an academic job (write a great dissertation, turn it into a book, possibly publish a few monographs, give conference papers), you also will need to do some things to increase your chances of getting a non-academic job (perhaps consult, or do an internship over the summer, or take a part-time job during the school year).