academic job market

History (and Historians) Need a New Deal

by Shannan Clark

Only a program of direct public employment for historians, along with other academics, can lead to a vibrant future for the discipline in which access to careers is expanded, with greater diversity and equity.  The history of the WPA cultural projects shows us the way.

The PhD Glut and What to Do About It

by Jonathan Zimmerman

A professor of education history addresses a recent book on career diversity for PhD students and questions whether academic departments are prepared to revamp their curricula to prepare students for careers outside academia. 

Webinar: Make the Most of Your Postdoc (10/8/2020)

Join a panel of historians on October 8 for a discussion of the increasingly common postdoctoral fellowship and how to make the best use of it for professional and career development in and out of academe. 

Why I Quit Academe for a Coding Boot Camp

by Zeb Larson

Delusions about the availability of "alt-ac" jobs for new humanities PhDs are stopping graduate students from making informed career choices and covering up the academic profession's failures to recognize and act on crisis. 

Arbitrator Sides with U of Akron on Faculty Layoffs

Some of the terminated faculty members had since chosen to retire, but the result means that the 67 who did not will not be able to return to their jobs.

How the Coronavirus Will — or Should — Transform Graduate Education

by Dennis M. Hogan and Rithika Ramamurthy

The polite fiction of graduate school as an apprenticeship for a future academic career, which has been under strain for many years, now faces obliteration.

Jennifer Polk: "Recent PhDs Need to Have Their Confidence Boosted"

by David Austin Walsh

The academc job market remains in the doldrums. Recent PhDs continue to outstrip new positions, and the adjunctification of higher ed. in general -- and historians in particular -- continues unabated. It's not surprising, then, that a growing contingent of recent PhDs are standing athwart academic history yelling 'stop!'