Having a PhD and a tenure-stream job has never been a sinecure. At the same time, being denied tenure isn’t necessarily the end, but that depends on one’s publication record and where the tenure denial occurred. Of the people who were denied tenure in my department over the years, all but one found another academic job.
I’ve also seen some PhD’s turn sour on an academic career – whether or not they had a good job or were promoted. In some cases they were not willing to put in the hours needed – 60 hr weeks is pretty much the norm where I work. In some cases they found other outlets for their skills and left academia in “good standing.”
Both government and the private economy need specialists in all kinds of things. But people have to be adaptable and skilled as well.
Yes, I just had lunch with a Princeton PhD who’d gotten tenure at a top school – he’s leaving academia for a DC-based government job. More money, less work and “less toxic politics.” The latter made me laugh.
“There’s an easy answer to the question of whether students should pursue liberal arts or more vocational majors, argues Matthew Sigelman, and it will allow liberal arts graduates to virtually double their current employability.”
Getting off track. The thread is not about humanities majors as preparation for other jobs or schools. It is about the decline in faculty positions for the humanities area, at least per the original post.
@JHS - That is a good outcome, but I wonder if your cousin could have gotten a similar position without spending the years in grad school for a PHD or if a masters would have sufficed.
An acquaintance has a PHD in Japanese History but could not find an academic position. He ended up working for an investment firm, and who later shifted him over to developing business in Japan where his educational background was very helpful. He might have gotten to the same place with a masters.
I think this report is pretty damning, but as someone who is weighing a humanities postgraduate degree… we already know that the outlook is grim. You can’t just go into a field that you care zero about. Also, I think that we are eventually going to see an upturn in jobs 10-20 years from now. Ik I was pushed to do math/science which held little to no interest, but I am sure many who would have otherwise pursued Humanities did fall in line somewhere else
As I went through one last round of vigorous introspection before selecting a major, I met a former English teacher of mine. One of those strong positive influences. I asked her what I might do with an English degree. I’ll always remember her answer: “Not a d@&* thing except teach!”
And that’s how it was in the 80’s. So declining? I don’t know. Tech is probably a little less cyclical than it was, so maybe it seems so by comparison.
And OT or not, learning to code today is like learning to type was in the 70’s and 80’s. Not absolutely necessary but, well, yeah it kinda is.
“exactly what was said in the 80’s about prospects in the 90’s” When DH finished hs dissertation defense, his major prof came outside with him and said exactly that. Along the lines of, “This gen of professors skews older, they’ll be retiring soon.” Of a rather large cohort in his grad program, few went on to college teaching. In his sub specialty, more did. But guess what? As they reach retirement age, they are not being replaced.
Many humanities grads from less competitive schools end up as administrative staff. Two generations ago they would have gone to secretarial school for a few months. Now they spend four plus years in college for the same type of position.
Out of curiosity, what were the demographics on secretarial schools back in the day? Such things did exist, as I recall. We shouldn’t pretend it was otherwise.
No argument that from time immemorial women have done great and amazing things and often against great odds, but according to my mother, in the middle of the last century she could choose from teaching, secretarial work, nursing, or physical therapy (like a favorite aunt).
Agree with the posts above about the belief that jobs will be plentiful in future decades. There were a ton of faculty hired in the late 60s and early 70s and the story was that there were going to be many openings when they retired. They did retire but the vast predicted number of job openings did not materialize.
Retiring faculty in the humanities are definitely not being replaced. Administrations are converting tenure-track lines to lecturer lines that don’t carry the promise of tenure and allow institutions to trim or shut down departments that aren’t profit centers. This happens all the time at tuition-driven institutions (i.e. those with low/no endowment). Elite well-endowed schools will retain humanities departments with higher-level course offerings as part of their historic identity, but I don’t think average colleges will, because there isn’t a market demand for them. This process will take some time but it’s already well underway.
Someone with a literature PhD, for example, generally doesn’t want to teach 4 sections per semester of freshman comp in a service department the sole purpose of which is to provide low level gen ed requirements for all the business and CS majors. That’s not the dream. Humanities professors don’t want to work at institutions that are basically DeVry with dorms. But those are the bulk of the jobs available (when jobs are available).
Teaching at a prep school or a public high school in an affluent district can be a better and more intellectually rewarding gig for a PhD than working in service-department hell. But those jobs aren’t easy to get either. Unionized public school districts have to pay teachers with advanced degrees more, and that can be a barrier to getting a job.
The trick in our district is to hire teachers with BA’s, then once they get tenure, they seek distance masters and PHD degrees in education from non-selective directional teaching universities at the cost of the district. Once they get their degrees, then their salaries are bumped as per the union contract.
It would be better if the district hired PHD’s who got their degrees in an actual subject other than education, but that would not benefit the tenured teachers already in the union so it does not get done.
I don’t know the answer to that. The situation was/is more complicated than that.
– The founders/decision-makers at the firm in question all have math PhDs, and while the firm hires some non-PhDs, the majority of those it hires are PhDs or ABDs. Math is not a field where master’s degrees mean much. Most people I know who have gone into terminal master’s degree programs in math have been trying to upgrade their credentials to apply to PhD programs in math or computer science.
– People generally have to pay for terminal master’s degrees. They don’t pay for PhDs, except in opportunity cost.
– In this case the opportunity cost would be astronomical if you assume that the person in question could have been hired by the same firm at the same (inflation-adjusted) compensation after a year or two of graduate study. But in all likelihood he was not mature enough to have gotten a job offer then, and he might not even have gotten an interview. It’s not like he had a master plan to work in the financial sector. He stumbled into it; five years earlier, he might never even have stumbled there.
– The fact is, if he could have been hired with a master’s degree in math, he could probably have been hired with his BS in physics from a respected university. But maturity and sheer cluelessness would have been huge barriers.
@Zinhead -I don’t know of any public districts in my state where the school pays for your advanced degree - despite the fact that my state requires all teachers to complete a master’s (or take a min of 30 hrs of graduate level classes) within 10 years of getting a teaching license in order to keep the license. I have known lots of teachers who have gotten degrees from no selective/directionals b/c they are paying out of pocket, and getting the 2nd degree while working (subject area programs don’t make that easy)
I agree that it would be great if unlicensed schools sought out teachers with advanced degrees in subject areas- but the don’t b/c they cost more. I don’t think that is the “fault” of tenured teachers, I think that public schools need to save $$.
Also- are there a glut of Ph.D’s looking to teach HS? I have been on the hiring committee at my HS for 6 years- have been a part of the interview process for every new hire- never seen a Ph.D. in the resume pile for a classroom teacher.
Our high school had several PhD’s that I know of and perhaps even more. Two in biology and one taught AP Art History and AP Euro. Other public schools in the area have even more