The Depressed History Job Market
This year’s decline in academic jobs in history may be 15 percent or higher, according to preliminary data presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. The figures came as no surprise to the graduate students here seeking jobs. Reports abounded of job searches being called off, or of people in interviews being warned of the strong possibility that the openings might not be filled this year. People leaving the job interview area of the meeting were trading stories about which jobs might actually be filled. Job candidates who a year ago had goals of four or five interviews here were thrilled to have one.
Historians blogging the conference are writing about “the smell of fear” among job seekers or suggesting — with some stretching to make their point — that those in the career center would be worthy subjects for photography by Walker Evans.
Robert Townsend, the AHA’s assistant director for research and publications, said in a paper he presented that the economic downturn’s impact is affecting multiple generations of professors: Some departments are reporting that professors who had planned to retire at the end of this academic year, but who had not formally started the process, have reversed course and announced they will stay — after departments started advertising for their positions, meaning more of the apparent openings may be phantom possibilities. One Ph.D. student leaving an interview said that she was having better luck than many of her colleagues, having landed two interviews here. But she had three positions for which searches were called off after she applied....
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Also appearing at the panel with Townsend was Sterling Fluharty, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oklahoma who writes extensively on job market issues on his blog Ph.D. in History. Fluharty argued that — bad as the recession is — historians are victims of some longer-term trends in academe and in their discipline. For an increasing number of historians, he warned, a tenure-track job may be “an impossible dream” because of a system “rigged against historians.”
He reviewed trends in which colleges have responded to enrollment demands by hiring not tenure-track professors, but adjuncts....
Read entire article at Scott Jaschik at the website of Inside Higher Ed
Historians blogging the conference are writing about “the smell of fear” among job seekers or suggesting — with some stretching to make their point — that those in the career center would be worthy subjects for photography by Walker Evans.
Robert Townsend, the AHA’s assistant director for research and publications, said in a paper he presented that the economic downturn’s impact is affecting multiple generations of professors: Some departments are reporting that professors who had planned to retire at the end of this academic year, but who had not formally started the process, have reversed course and announced they will stay — after departments started advertising for their positions, meaning more of the apparent openings may be phantom possibilities. One Ph.D. student leaving an interview said that she was having better luck than many of her colleagues, having landed two interviews here. But she had three positions for which searches were called off after she applied....
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Also appearing at the panel with Townsend was Sterling Fluharty, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oklahoma who writes extensively on job market issues on his blog Ph.D. in History. Fluharty argued that — bad as the recession is — historians are victims of some longer-term trends in academe and in their discipline. For an increasing number of historians, he warned, a tenure-track job may be “an impossible dream” because of a system “rigged against historians.”
He reviewed trends in which colleges have responded to enrollment demands by hiring not tenure-track professors, but adjuncts....
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Chronicle of Higher Ed: Economy's Toll on Job Market Is Evident at Historians' Meeting