Academic history hiring today

 

Bret Devereaux

@BretDevereaux

One thing missed in discussions of academic history hiring anger is how quickly the job market turned relative to PhD completion times. I see tenured historians saying, "we warned you" and - no, you didn't. You warned the incoming class of 2017; this is the incoming of 2014. 1/

The fellow everyone piled on got his PhD in 2020, so he probably entered that program in 2013 or 2014. Folks, in 2013 you were still talking about how jobs were going to 'bounce back' soon. The placement rate was still 54%. *Most* PhDs got jobs. 2/

And as a sidebar, for the long-tenured folks, the pre-2015 or so folks, who say, "it was just as hard for us to." No, it wasn't, stop that. You had 50+% placement rates, compared to c. 10-15% now. It has always been 'hard' in some nebulous sense, it has not been this hard. 3/

I entered my program in 2012, at which point my advisor's placement rate was a sterling 80%, my department's rate was well above 50%. Even as things declined, advisors confidently told me, "it's hard, but you'll get through" (I did not). 4/

By the by, of the seven PhDs my advisor finished (myself, the two after me, the three before me), *one* got a permanent academic job. A drop from 80% to 14% in the time it took me to complete the program. 5/

Now, is that the fault of DEI or what have you? No, it's a problem with collapsing history hiring, which makes the pre-existing faddishness of academic hiring worse because when there are so few jobs, *only* the fad-jobs get hired, whatever the fad of the day is. 6/

The way out is advocating for the value of our discipline, making that a core part of the job of being an academic historian, not something optional or a few people do on the side. The 'numbers' fields have been self-marketing for decades and it shows that we haven't. 7/

The demand is there - you can see our enrollments remain more-or-less steady (steadier than faculty numbers!) - and yes, majors have fallen, but students don't pay for majors, they pay for enrollment. Assessment purely by majors is an excuse to cut departments that do work. 8/

But so long as the attitude of the median tenured historian is "I told you it was hard" with a side of "f*** you, got mine," the field will continue to shrink. It certainly cannot survive as an if the only people who advocate for it are the ones you don't hire. /end

Data on placement rates: 2013 and 2017: https://t.co/Auj9utjtdV Estimates for the 2019 cohort: https://t.co/BxroUa1KxS Enrollments falling more slowly than faculty numbers: https://t.co/pj2urYEuuh cf. https://t.co/sAnHoyPXrE

Nir Rosenzweig

@NirRosenzweig

·

7h

According to Noah Smith hiring collapsed for a very good reason - stopping expansion, with tenure for life, means that when the field stopped growing very few can get in.

Bret Devereaux

@BretDevereaux

·

7h

But the field isn't 'stopped growing' - it is actively shrinking. Shrinking, I keep noting, faster than enrollments. Which rather suggests more is at work, no?

Castlebroke

@Brokencastles1

But shouldn’t this field rightfully shrink? It’s a finite set of topics that been increasingly covered to death. Source material discoveries must be diminishing. Maybe room for new synthesizing theories or popularized versions of known material but don’t need too many people for that. And there are no techniques to learn that need first person instruction. If someone wants to study the field, they can just go start reading!

von Kopfmann

@d_kopfmann

·

5h

I and that bloke entered Princeton history Ph.D. program in 2014. There was understanding that the job market was tough, but also an expectation that as Princeton grads we will find jobs. 10 years later I have 4 papers out; he has published a book. And we are both unemployed.

henry houthini

@halldorlactase

·

6h

I was a history major from 2016-2019 and the vibe shift from my mentors was palatable across my last three or four semesters and the year after graduation from "you can probably make this work even if it's not good" to "I cannot ethically recommend this"