The American Historical Association
Chapter 1. We Historians, continued ...
Generational Succession in the Academy
Doctoral education is about generational succession: the transfer of knowledge, authority, and jobs across generations and the modification and extension of that knowledge.
The average age of historians in the academy is nearly fifty-five, making us slightly older than our colleagues in other disciplines.
The large cohort of historians that entered the professoriate in the 1960s is beginning to retire; more than a third of academic historians have indicated that they expect to retire in the next decade. 46
It would be foolish to predict the number of academic positions that will become available.
And the issue has never been the absolute number of jobs but rather the relation of job seekers to jobs.
Still, it is clear that a very large cohort soon will be retiring.
The women and men who have recently completed doctoral programs or will complete them in the next decade will have an unusual opportunity to shape the profession.
The size of this cohort, its demographic characteristics, and the preparation of its members — as teachers, researchers, colleagues, and academic citizens — will have significance not just for their individual careers but also for the profession as a whole.
It is impossible to project either the need for teachers of history or the production of Ph.D.'s in the discipline.
But tracking enrollments, demographic changes, and the production of Ph.D.'s is helpful for thinking about the opportunities before the profession.
The number of undergraduate history majors (and enrollments, to the extent they can be tracked 47 ) peaked in 1970-71, declining to a low in 1984-85 (see table 1.1).
The number began rising in the late 1980s, stabilizing in the 1990s at about 60 percent of the level that obtained in the early 1970s (and roughly equal to the number of undergraduate majors in the mid-1960s).
Ph.D. production in history generally followed the same curve, peaking in 1972-73, then declining by more than 50 percent to a low of 497 in the mid-1980s.
That number increased to 984 by 1999 and to 1,060 in 2000.
The number of Ph.D.'s produced in 2000 roughly matches the annual number in the early 1970s.
The great gap between the number of new Ph.D. recipients and job openings that suddenly emerged about 1971 narrowed considerably by 1980, and in the decade of the eighties the trend lines for new Ph.D.'s and jobs even converged a couple of times. 48
But the 1990s brought a large upswing in the production of Ph.D.'s without a commensurate increase in job openings (with adjunct positions filling the gap; see figure 1.8).
Although "what-might-have-beens" cannot have been, it is worth noting that had the production of Ph.D.'s remained steady from the 1980s onward, the ratio of positions to applicants would be reasonably balanced today — though, of course, this might have drawn more students into the field, again producing a mismatch.
The upward swing in Ph.D.'s that began in 1992 invites further inquiry.
The resulting academic unemployment and underemployment, exacerbated by budget cuts, especially at public universities, explains the special intensity of the "job crisis" in the 1990s.
The budget cuts, which brought widespread exploitation of adjunct teachers, were in fact partially enabled by the oversupply of Ph.D.'s in history seeking academic employment.
The result was a vicious cycle that continues.
This sharp rise in Ph.D. production in the early 1990s affected the humanities generally, and it seems to have an explanation. 49
It coincided precisely with a wide discussion in the late 1980s that envisioned a looming shortage of Ph.D.'s in the humanities in the near future.
This concern (and presumed opportunity) was prompted by an analysis of the likely demand for faculty in the 1990s and beyond.
For the humanities, the predicted shortage was expected to produce only seven applicants for every ten job openings by 1997. 50
It was music to the ears of outstanding students, not to mention those teachers of undergraduates hoping to send their best students to graduate school.
And graduate faculties were eager to receive them.
Regrettably, in an unfortunate example of the perils of prediction, the positions did not materialize.
But the new Ph.D.'s arrived in abundance in the 1990s.
This unhappy increase in the production of Ph.D.'s marks one of two instances in the past half-century when history deviated significantly (and upward) from other social sciences, economics excepted.
The other period was between 1967 and 1977 (see figure 1.9). 51
TO BE CONTINUED ...
ON HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
Re: ON HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
The American Historical Association
Chapter 1. We Historians, continued ...
There are at present signs that painful market-driven adjustments are taking place.
Entering classes of doctoral students have decreased in size, and this decline will soon be reflected in a reduced number of Ph.D.'s in history.
While it is likely that the expanding economy of the 1990s partly explains the decline in new doctoral students, our recent survey of doctoral programs indicates that reduced enrollments were also the result of responsible policy decisions by departments, for which we heartily commend them. 52
This has been most clearly the case in the larger departments ranked highly by the NRC, though the survey indicates that many smaller departments also reduced their admissions (see figure 1.10).
Based on other surveys conducted by the AHA, the exceptions to this trend tend to be a number of programs (25 percent of the programs for which we have data) not ranked by the NRC in 1993 because they were either too small, too new, or too specialized.
These continue to increase their doctoral enrollments (see figure 1.11). 53
Without detailed information in each instance concerning local circumstances, one must not rush to judgment.
But given the national situation, we insist that any local decision to increase the number of doctoral students surely must have a clear and compelling justification, one able to meet a very high standard of responsibility.
A quest for institutional prestige, higher state funding formulas, lower teaching loads, or a need for graduate student instructors does not meet that standard.
The directors of graduate studies who responded to the Committee's survey of doctoral programs indicate that the quality of applicants is as high as ever. 54
But a majority also reported that competition for outstanding graduate students had become increasingly intense.
Such reports suggest an excess of slots to be filled.
If true, only unhappy consequences can follow — two of which are especially troubling.
There will be incentives to admit less-qualified students to maintain a doctoral program and, perhaps, to ensure a supply of graduate student teachers.
Here there is a conflict of interest separating faculty members and prospective students; departments and university administrators are obliged to confront this ethical issue with all seriousness.
Alternatively, the department may maintain high admission standards, with the result that too few students will be admitted to create a cohort of sufficient size to sustain necessary courses or to ensure a lively and diverse exchange of ideas in courses and within the community of graduate students.
Here there is surely a pedagogical issue of significance, but it is as well an ethical one.
Painful as it might be, upon exploration of these issues some departments and deans will have to consider whether a given program should continue.
Between 1995 and 2000, the number of enrolled graduate students at Ph.D.-granting history programs declined by 17 percent, from 14,158 to 11,790.
Although it is too early to identify any firm trend lines, it is notable that the proportion of women enrolled increased, while the proportion of white males declined.
There was a small decline in Asian American and African American students, and a significant increase (40 percent) in Latino/a students (see figure 1.12). 55
The improvement in the male-to-female ratio to 55:45 is notable (in 1970, the ratio was 85:15).
These gains made by women in history fall short of those made in other humanities disciplines, where new Ph.D.'s earned by women have gone beyond the 50 percent mark to create substantial female majorities.
In fact, new Ph.D.'s in English have been predominantly female for two decades, and in 2000 the male-to-female ratio was almost the reverse of history at 42:58.
In foreign languages and literatures, 61.5 percent of new Ph.D.'s in 2000 were women.
Women have taken the majority of doctoral degrees in American studies for more than fifteen years, accounting for 56 percent in 2000 (see figure 1.13). 56
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Chapter 1. We Historians, continued ...
There are at present signs that painful market-driven adjustments are taking place.
Entering classes of doctoral students have decreased in size, and this decline will soon be reflected in a reduced number of Ph.D.'s in history.
While it is likely that the expanding economy of the 1990s partly explains the decline in new doctoral students, our recent survey of doctoral programs indicates that reduced enrollments were also the result of responsible policy decisions by departments, for which we heartily commend them. 52
This has been most clearly the case in the larger departments ranked highly by the NRC, though the survey indicates that many smaller departments also reduced their admissions (see figure 1.10).
Based on other surveys conducted by the AHA, the exceptions to this trend tend to be a number of programs (25 percent of the programs for which we have data) not ranked by the NRC in 1993 because they were either too small, too new, or too specialized.
These continue to increase their doctoral enrollments (see figure 1.11). 53
Without detailed information in each instance concerning local circumstances, one must not rush to judgment.
But given the national situation, we insist that any local decision to increase the number of doctoral students surely must have a clear and compelling justification, one able to meet a very high standard of responsibility.
A quest for institutional prestige, higher state funding formulas, lower teaching loads, or a need for graduate student instructors does not meet that standard.
The directors of graduate studies who responded to the Committee's survey of doctoral programs indicate that the quality of applicants is as high as ever. 54
But a majority also reported that competition for outstanding graduate students had become increasingly intense.
Such reports suggest an excess of slots to be filled.
If true, only unhappy consequences can follow — two of which are especially troubling.
There will be incentives to admit less-qualified students to maintain a doctoral program and, perhaps, to ensure a supply of graduate student teachers.
Here there is a conflict of interest separating faculty members and prospective students; departments and university administrators are obliged to confront this ethical issue with all seriousness.
Alternatively, the department may maintain high admission standards, with the result that too few students will be admitted to create a cohort of sufficient size to sustain necessary courses or to ensure a lively and diverse exchange of ideas in courses and within the community of graduate students.
Here there is surely a pedagogical issue of significance, but it is as well an ethical one.
Painful as it might be, upon exploration of these issues some departments and deans will have to consider whether a given program should continue.
Between 1995 and 2000, the number of enrolled graduate students at Ph.D.-granting history programs declined by 17 percent, from 14,158 to 11,790.
Although it is too early to identify any firm trend lines, it is notable that the proportion of women enrolled increased, while the proportion of white males declined.
There was a small decline in Asian American and African American students, and a significant increase (40 percent) in Latino/a students (see figure 1.12). 55
The improvement in the male-to-female ratio to 55:45 is notable (in 1970, the ratio was 85:15).
These gains made by women in history fall short of those made in other humanities disciplines, where new Ph.D.'s earned by women have gone beyond the 50 percent mark to create substantial female majorities.
In fact, new Ph.D.'s in English have been predominantly female for two decades, and in 2000 the male-to-female ratio was almost the reverse of history at 42:58.
In foreign languages and literatures, 61.5 percent of new Ph.D.'s in 2000 were women.
Women have taken the majority of doctoral degrees in American studies for more than fifteen years, accounting for 56 percent in 2000 (see figure 1.13). 56
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
The American Historical Association
Chapter 1. We Historians, continued ...
Whether history is moving in the same direction toward a female majority is not clear, but it is a possibility.
While sexual equality is a firm goal of the profession, its achievement often has unanticipated and unwanted implications.
Historical and sociological studies of professions typically point out that a female majority has often connoted the "feminization" of a profession, which is frequently, if erroneously, assumed to signify "a decline in status" of a given profession. 57
Such perceptions typically translate into lower salaries and prestige.
The historical profession must challenge such false associations and, more positively, emphasize the importance of the increased representation of previously (and still) underrepresented groups and their invigorating impact on the discipline, something evident in the topics studied, the questions asked, and the answers given.
That history is no longer researched and taught by a homogeneous faculty has brought new energy, rigor, and intellectual richness to the discipline.
For African Americans, Latinos/as, Asian Americans, and Native Americans, the changing demographics are more complex.
Taken collectively, the percentage of members of these groups receiving Ph.D.'s in history has edged upward to 15 percent of all new Ph.D.'s in 2000.
Yet their representation in history lags behind American studies, sociology, and political science, though history's figures are slightly higher than those for English (see figure 1.14).
Within history, different groups have different patterns.
The recent increase in underrepresented groups is largely traceable to the entry of more Asian American and Latino/a historians, though their numbers remain small.
There has been a slight decline in the percentage of African Americans earning Ph.D.'s in history, from 4.2 percent from 1979 to 1984 to 3.6 percent from 1995 to 2000. 58
The NRC in the past collected limited data on family background (the information is now collected by the National Opinion Research Center).
The data are not as rich or as precise as one would like, but they seem to point toward a change in the class background of Ph.D.'s in history, with less openness to students from families without previous experience with higher education and, especially, without graduate and professional education.
The data we have track the education level of the fathers of Ph.D.'s as a marker of socioeconomic standing.
Though an imperfect marker, this does indicate a shift toward greater class advantage for those receiving Ph.D.'s in history.
In 1972, 39 percent of the fathers of students who obtained a Ph.D. had a bachelor's degree, compared to 18 percent of the adult male population.
In 2000, 64 percent of the fathers of history Ph.D.'s held a college degree, while 28 percent of all adult males had achieved that level of education.
Perhaps more striking is the increase in the proportion of students from highly educated families, families in which the father has a master's degree or more.
From 1974 to 1979, 16 percent of the doctoral recipients had such fathers; in 2000 the figure was 39 percent (see table 1.2). 59
Two conclusions follow.
First, doctoral students in history have come and continue to come disproportionately from relatively privileged family backgrounds.
Second, the proportion and number of students in doctoral programs from first-generation college families is declining.
This trend — if the weak data are sufficient to speak of a real trend — is relevant to both diversity and opportunity questions.
And the data point to a third, more speculative point.
The uncertainty of employment in history may be discouraging students from first-generation college families from pursuing history careers.
One can understand their preference for more secure career paths, but the profession loses vitality and students of potential lose an opportunity to pursue what may be to them a substantively if not practically appealing life work.
Achieving a better match between employment and Ph.D. production may, therefore, be essential in order to encourage such talented students to pursue careers in history.
Paradoxically, a case might be made that a significant reduction in the production of Ph.D.'s could increase diversity.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Chapter 1. We Historians, continued ...
Whether history is moving in the same direction toward a female majority is not clear, but it is a possibility.
While sexual equality is a firm goal of the profession, its achievement often has unanticipated and unwanted implications.
Historical and sociological studies of professions typically point out that a female majority has often connoted the "feminization" of a profession, which is frequently, if erroneously, assumed to signify "a decline in status" of a given profession. 57
Such perceptions typically translate into lower salaries and prestige.
The historical profession must challenge such false associations and, more positively, emphasize the importance of the increased representation of previously (and still) underrepresented groups and their invigorating impact on the discipline, something evident in the topics studied, the questions asked, and the answers given.
That history is no longer researched and taught by a homogeneous faculty has brought new energy, rigor, and intellectual richness to the discipline.
For African Americans, Latinos/as, Asian Americans, and Native Americans, the changing demographics are more complex.
Taken collectively, the percentage of members of these groups receiving Ph.D.'s in history has edged upward to 15 percent of all new Ph.D.'s in 2000.
Yet their representation in history lags behind American studies, sociology, and political science, though history's figures are slightly higher than those for English (see figure 1.14).
Within history, different groups have different patterns.
The recent increase in underrepresented groups is largely traceable to the entry of more Asian American and Latino/a historians, though their numbers remain small.
There has been a slight decline in the percentage of African Americans earning Ph.D.'s in history, from 4.2 percent from 1979 to 1984 to 3.6 percent from 1995 to 2000. 58
The NRC in the past collected limited data on family background (the information is now collected by the National Opinion Research Center).
The data are not as rich or as precise as one would like, but they seem to point toward a change in the class background of Ph.D.'s in history, with less openness to students from families without previous experience with higher education and, especially, without graduate and professional education.
The data we have track the education level of the fathers of Ph.D.'s as a marker of socioeconomic standing.
Though an imperfect marker, this does indicate a shift toward greater class advantage for those receiving Ph.D.'s in history.
In 1972, 39 percent of the fathers of students who obtained a Ph.D. had a bachelor's degree, compared to 18 percent of the adult male population.
In 2000, 64 percent of the fathers of history Ph.D.'s held a college degree, while 28 percent of all adult males had achieved that level of education.
Perhaps more striking is the increase in the proportion of students from highly educated families, families in which the father has a master's degree or more.
From 1974 to 1979, 16 percent of the doctoral recipients had such fathers; in 2000 the figure was 39 percent (see table 1.2). 59
Two conclusions follow.
First, doctoral students in history have come and continue to come disproportionately from relatively privileged family backgrounds.
Second, the proportion and number of students in doctoral programs from first-generation college families is declining.
This trend — if the weak data are sufficient to speak of a real trend — is relevant to both diversity and opportunity questions.
And the data point to a third, more speculative point.
The uncertainty of employment in history may be discouraging students from first-generation college families from pursuing history careers.
One can understand their preference for more secure career paths, but the profession loses vitality and students of potential lose an opportunity to pursue what may be to them a substantively if not practically appealing life work.
Achieving a better match between employment and Ph.D. production may, therefore, be essential in order to encourage such talented students to pursue careers in history.
Paradoxically, a case might be made that a significant reduction in the production of Ph.D.'s could increase diversity.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
The American Historical Association
Chapter 1. We Historians, continued ...
Public and Private Universities
Differences between public and private universities warrant attention.
Until 1960, private institutions provided doctoral education for most historians.
But since then, public institutions have educated a substantial majority, 71 percent in 1995 and 68 percent in 2000 (see figures 1.15 and 1.16).
Given the cutbacks in funding for public higher education since the 1980s, the large proportion of doctoral education in public institutions is surprising.
We hope that enrollments have not remained high because of cutbacks — to ensure a pool of graduate student teachers at a time of budget cutting.
African Americans, Latinos/as, Asian Americans, and Native Americans are equally underrepresented in public and private institutions, though the percentage of women matriculating in doctoral programs at private institutions is somewhat higher.
It is encouraging that the list of schools recently sending students to doctoral programs in history (1998-2001; see table 1.3) has become much more diverse than it was in the period 1936-56, with public institutions well represented. 60
In the mid-1990s, there was not a significant difference in the proportion of funded first-year students in history at public (61 percent) and private (63 percent) institutions.
But our survey of doctoral programs revealed a substantial change by 2001.
First-year students at both public and private universities were more likely to be funded than in previous years, but the gap between the two has widened significantly, at 75 percent for public universities versus 91 percent for private ones.
It should also be noted that funding at public institutions usually requires more teaching, and this results in even greater inequality.
Recent improvements notwithstanding, the average level of funding at both private and public institutions remains inadequate. 61
This underfunding, as students are quick to point out, is often matched by an unrealistic graduate school regulation limiting or forbidding "outside" employment.
Until stipends provide adequate support for graduate students, such regulations prompt both widespread rule-breaking and cynicism.
Faculty and deans must recognize that even the largest stipends currently being offered to doctoral students require supplements from families, work, loans, or a combination.
When programs describe these students as being "fully funded," they are describing an illusion.
Students are better funded than they were a few years ago, and that should give some comfort to both students and faculty.
But until funding is substantially increased, the corps of graduate students able to fully concentrate on studies will be more of an aspiration than a reality.
Departments generally do not have authority over funding levels; they can do no more and no less than press for adequate funding.
In the meantime, both faculty and prospective students need to be aware of the present reality.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Chapter 1. We Historians, continued ...
Public and Private Universities
Differences between public and private universities warrant attention.
Until 1960, private institutions provided doctoral education for most historians.
But since then, public institutions have educated a substantial majority, 71 percent in 1995 and 68 percent in 2000 (see figures 1.15 and 1.16).
Given the cutbacks in funding for public higher education since the 1980s, the large proportion of doctoral education in public institutions is surprising.
We hope that enrollments have not remained high because of cutbacks — to ensure a pool of graduate student teachers at a time of budget cutting.
African Americans, Latinos/as, Asian Americans, and Native Americans are equally underrepresented in public and private institutions, though the percentage of women matriculating in doctoral programs at private institutions is somewhat higher.
It is encouraging that the list of schools recently sending students to doctoral programs in history (1998-2001; see table 1.3) has become much more diverse than it was in the period 1936-56, with public institutions well represented. 60
In the mid-1990s, there was not a significant difference in the proportion of funded first-year students in history at public (61 percent) and private (63 percent) institutions.
But our survey of doctoral programs revealed a substantial change by 2001.
First-year students at both public and private universities were more likely to be funded than in previous years, but the gap between the two has widened significantly, at 75 percent for public universities versus 91 percent for private ones.
It should also be noted that funding at public institutions usually requires more teaching, and this results in even greater inequality.
Recent improvements notwithstanding, the average level of funding at both private and public institutions remains inadequate. 61
This underfunding, as students are quick to point out, is often matched by an unrealistic graduate school regulation limiting or forbidding "outside" employment.
Until stipends provide adequate support for graduate students, such regulations prompt both widespread rule-breaking and cynicism.
Faculty and deans must recognize that even the largest stipends currently being offered to doctoral students require supplements from families, work, loans, or a combination.
When programs describe these students as being "fully funded," they are describing an illusion.
Students are better funded than they were a few years ago, and that should give some comfort to both students and faculty.
But until funding is substantially increased, the corps of graduate students able to fully concentrate on studies will be more of an aspiration than a reality.
Departments generally do not have authority over funding levels; they can do no more and no less than press for adequate funding.
In the meantime, both faculty and prospective students need to be aware of the present reality.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
The American Historical Association
Chapter 1. We Historians, continued ...
Data collected by the Department of Education on the funding of first-year doctoral students in all fields indicate that between one-fourth (at public institutions) and one-third (at private institutions) carry a debt load in excess of ten thousand dollars, obviously a significant burden. 62
The Committee's survey and site visits reveal that, subsequent to the collection and publication of the government's data, several institutions — mostly but not exclusively private — have established multiyear awards combining fellowships and teaching assistantships for all students.
This is a positive development, though it too may contribute to the widening gap between public and private institutions and may, as we shall discuss in the next chapter, have a negative impact on diversity.
Similarly, a growing disparity in faculty salaries at public and private institutions could — over time — result in a relative weakening of the history departments at public institutions. 63
There is another, more general piece of evidence of a growing private/public distinction as well.
Among the leading graduate institutions, as ranked by the National Research Council, eight of the nine ranked at the top are private.
The extended period of infatuation with privatization and consequent disinvestment in the public sector has begun to reshape higher education and educational opportunity. 64
These indications of the weakening of public higher education point to potential problems of considerable import.
They bring to the fore questions of access and quality.
But they also raise regional issues.
Private research institutions are disproportionately located in the Northeast, thus pointing toward a possible pattern of regional advantage or disadvantage.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Chapter 1. We Historians, continued ...
Data collected by the Department of Education on the funding of first-year doctoral students in all fields indicate that between one-fourth (at public institutions) and one-third (at private institutions) carry a debt load in excess of ten thousand dollars, obviously a significant burden. 62
The Committee's survey and site visits reveal that, subsequent to the collection and publication of the government's data, several institutions — mostly but not exclusively private — have established multiyear awards combining fellowships and teaching assistantships for all students.
This is a positive development, though it too may contribute to the widening gap between public and private institutions and may, as we shall discuss in the next chapter, have a negative impact on diversity.
Similarly, a growing disparity in faculty salaries at public and private institutions could — over time — result in a relative weakening of the history departments at public institutions. 63
There is another, more general piece of evidence of a growing private/public distinction as well.
Among the leading graduate institutions, as ranked by the National Research Council, eight of the nine ranked at the top are private.
The extended period of infatuation with privatization and consequent disinvestment in the public sector has begun to reshape higher education and educational opportunity. 64
These indications of the weakening of public higher education point to potential problems of considerable import.
They bring to the fore questions of access and quality.
But they also raise regional issues.
Private research institutions are disproportionately located in the Northeast, thus pointing toward a possible pattern of regional advantage or disadvantage.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
The American Historical Association
Chapter 1. We Historians, concluded ...
The Challenge
Aggregate data are useful for obtaining a large view, but they inevitably obscure important local cases.
Indeed, the point of this report is not to create a national model but to encourage a very close analysis of local situations informed by a clearer awareness of national patterns and the Committee's suggestions for improvement.
These suggestions cover a range of issues — recruitment, curriculum, academic standards, financial aid, professional development, preparation for a variety of professional careers, and placement, among others.
The urgency of bringing production and training of Ph.D.'s more nearly into line with desired and likely career opportunities for professional historians in the foreseeable future is a strong message we bring.
Doctoral programs that exist (or exist at their present scale) mainly to provide teaching assistants for the institution without consideration of the students' bleak employment prospects cannot be justified.
In reducing the size of Ph.D. programs, care must be taken to achieve this without unduly restricting access to advanced education and careers in history for groups underrepresented in the profession, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, or graduates from less-selective undergraduate institutions.
We are equally concerned that the profession better adapt its graduate curriculum to the intellectual directions of the discipline and the multiple career settings of historians, preparing them better for the everyday work that will be demanded of them in those careers.
1. Marilyn McMillen et al., Qualification for the Public School Work Force: Prevalence of Out-of-Field Teachers, 1987-88 to 1999-2000 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, (2002), 57-58; Diane Ravitch, "The Educational Backgrounds of History Teachers," in Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History, ed. Peter Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Sam Wineburg (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 143-55.
2. This formulation owes its inspiration — though not its precise conceptualization — to the distinction between discipline and profession offered to the Committee by James Banner.
3. Too often, the discipline is assimilated to the department and vice versa; they should be distinguished. The discipline is a set of scholarly protocols, while a department is an administrative arrangement for the management of higher education, often — but not always — organized by discipline. The department's importance will be discussed in chapters 2 and 3.
4. See the clarifying comment by Roger Chartier in Actes/Proceedings, 18th International Congress of Historical Sciences (Montreal: CISH, 1995), 154.
5. Tony Becher, Academic Tribes and Territories (Milton Keynes, Eng.: Open University Press, 1989), 159.
6. The Committee's survey of employers in public history revealed a widespread belief on their part that academic historians either cannot or will not adapt their presentations to general audiences.
7. Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University, 4th ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 142.
8. Christopher Jencks and Davis Riesman, The Academic Revolution (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968).
9. Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas, ACLS Occasional Paper No. 49 (New York: ACLS, 2001). See also Thomas Bender, "Politics, Intellect, and the University, 1945-1995," in American Academic Culture in Transformation, ed. Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 1-38.
10. See Dexter Perkins and John Snell, The Education of Historians in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), 21; Thomas Bender, Intellect and Public Life (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 159n.
11. From 3,025 in the 1950s to 8,134 in the 1990s.
12. Frank Scott and Jeff Anstine, "Critical Mass in the Production of Ph.D.'s: A Multidisciplinary Study," Economics of Education Review 21 (2002): 29-42, sec. 4.2.
13. The National Survey of Post Secondary Faculty (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 1999) reveals that slightly fewer than two-thirds of historians published at least one refereed article and fewer than one-half published a book, including edited volumes and textbooks.
14. Some of these issues are illuminated in Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
15. The post-September 11, 2001, job listings suggest that the trend will become clear and upward for the Middle East.
16. Robert B. Townsend, "Job Market Report, 2000: History Job Openings Continue to Surge," Perspectives (December 2000), esp. table 5.
17. Edward A. Goedeken and Jean-Pierre V. M. Herubel, "Periodical Dispersion in American History: Observations on Article Bibliographies from the Journal of American History," The Serials Librarian 27 (1995): 64.
18. Gordon S. Wood and Anthony Molho, "Introduction," in Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past, ed. Gordon S. Wood and Anthony Molho (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 3. It should be noted that in many foreign universities area studies are conducted in special institutes outside of disciplinary structures.
19. Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians in the United States.
20. Robert B. Townsend, "Status of Women and Minorities in the History Profession," Perspectives (April 2000). A recent general study that covers all disciplines at research universities considers salary as well as rank. It argues that considering rank, salary, and institutional type (research), very little progress has been made. See Cathy A. Trower and Richard P. Chait, "Faculty Diversity: Too Little for Too Long," Harvard Magazine 104:4 (March-April 2002). The data on retirement plans indicated later in this report suggest a significant alteration of these figures within a decade.
21. Thomas B. Hoffer et al., Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities: Summary Report 2000 (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 2001).
22. Quoted in Philip M. Katz, "CGE's E-mail Survey Focuses on Challenges in Graduate Training," Perspectives 39 (April 2001): 11-15.
23. These discussions are well under way, and new programs and courses are being developed. One thinks quickly of the Atlantic world, the African Diaspora, world history, and transnational approaches to national histories.
24. Eighty-five percent of respondents to the CGE Survey of Doctoral Programs reported that training graduate students for jobs at research universities was a high or moderate priority of their departments. Ninety-three percent said that training students for careers at comprehensive four-year institutions was also a high or moderate priority, but only 66 percent said that training for community college careers was a high or moderate priority. Fifty-one percent said that training historians for museums and historic sites was a low priority or no priority at all, and 79 percent said that training historians for careers in government service was a low priority or no priority at all.
25. On differentiation, see Burton R. Clark, Academic Life: Small Worlds, Different Worlds (Princeton, N.J.: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1987).
26. Doctoral institutions employ 7,476 historians; M.A.-level institutions, 5,713; B.A. institutions 3,330; community colleges, 8,043. Based on data from The National Study of Postsecondary Faculty.
27. See Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), for a recent discussion of this issue. See also Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York: Norton, 1994). For an important theoretical discussion of the issues raised by Novick, see Thomas L. Haskell, Objectivity Is Not Neutrality: Explanatory Themes in History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), chap. 6; James T. Kloppenberg, "Objectivity and Historians: A Century of American Historical Writing," American Historical Review 94 (1989): 1011-30.
28. William H. McNeill, The Shape of European History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).
29. See the early statement by Fernand Braudel, "History and the Social Sciences: The Long Term," in The Varieties of History, ed. Fritz Stern (New York: Vintage, 1972), 403-29. François Furet even more radically suggested that historians could dispense with temporality. See Furet, In the Workshop of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), chap. 3.
30. For an excellent brief summary of major changes in historiography, see George G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1997).
31. Caroline Walker Bynum, "The Last Eurocentric Generation," Perspectives 34 (February 1996): 3-4. See also Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
32. One should note a reciprocal development, the "historical turn" in the human sciences, which include the humanities and parts of the social sciences. See Terrence McDonald, ed., The Historical Turn in the Human Sciences (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, Practicing the New Historicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
33. This concern was articulated early in the current job crisis by John Hope Franklin, "On the 'Oversupply' of Graduate Students," Daedalus 103 (Fall 1974): 265-68.
34. Quoted in William B. Hesseltine and Louis Kaplan, "Doctors of Philosophy of History: A Statistical Study," American Historical Review 47 (1942): 775. For the initial vision of the doctoral program at Columbia, see Thomas Bender, Intellect and Public Life (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), chap. 4.
35. The increased ambitiousness of recent dissertations is striking, especially when compared with the description of dissertations in the 1950s offered by Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 150-52.
36. Chris M. Golde and Timothy Dore, At Cross Purposes: What the Experiences of Today's Doctoral Students Reveal about Doctoral Education (Philadelphia: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2001). Golde provides a more detailed look at the data pertaining to history graduate students in "The Career Goals of History Doctoral Students: Data from the Survey of Doctoral Education and Career Preparation," Perspectives 39 (October 2001): 21-26. The statistics in the next few paragraphs are drawn from these two studies.
37. Among historians, 70 percent responded as being "definitely" interested in faculty careers at the time of the survey; 81 percent indicated that at one time they had been definitely interested in a faculty career.
38. Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 162.
39. Search committees commonly voice this complaint, and the Committee members who participated in the Professional Division's Job Interview Workshop at the AHA Annual Meeting in January 2003 found this problem to be pervasive.
40. Our survey asked directors of graduate study to characterize the degree offered in their department. The "research-based teaching degree" option was selected by 42 percent of the respondents, while 47 percent selected "research degree." Thirteen percent characterized the degree as a "general purpose degree," and none considered it a "teaching degree." In 1958, the aim of most programs was described as the education of a "scholar-teacher." Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 141. For a well-documented study of the transition from the "teacher-scholar" to the "scholar-teacher" in one department (Stanford University) from 1890 to 1990, see Larry Cuban, How Scholars Trumped Teachers: Change without Reform in University Curriculum, Teaching, and Research, 1890-1990 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), chap. 3.
41. Golde and Dore, At Cross Purposes, 5. For similar findings, see Kathryn A. Adams, "What Colleges and Universities Want in New Faculty," Preparing Future Faculty Occasional Paper (Washington, D.C., 2002), http://www.grad.washington.edu/envision ... _Memo.html .
42. Debra Stewart, "The State of Graduate Education," presentation to the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools (February 20, 2000), 3, at http://www.csgs.org/dstewart.htm . See also the statement by David Ward, President of the American Council of Education, at http://www.cossa.org/transcript.htm#keynote . More generally, see Michael Gibbons et al., The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1994).
43. We wish to acknowledge the observations about possible futures offered by Professor John Higham during a Committee meeting in Washington, D.C., April 2002, particularly his warning about the risk of driving away the students we most treasure. Possible evidence of such a future is the proliferation and appeal of such transdisciplinary journals as Critical Inquiry, Representations, and Public Culture.
44. The report is available at http://www.theaha.org/pubs/redef.htm .
45. Ernest L. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: The Priorities of the Professoriate (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990).
46. In 1999, 15.4 percent of academic historians indicated that they expected to retire in one to five years; another 22.8 percent estimate six to ten years. See National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, NSOPF:99 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 2001).
47. Enrollment data in history courses are difficult to find over time, but data collected in the 1970s suggest that enrollments in a broad way track B.A.'s, with B.A.'s fairly steady between 1.8 percent and 2 percent of total enrollment. See "AHA Survey," AHA Newsletter 12 (September 1974): 1.
48. Of course, there was a backlog of job seekers from previous years, many of whom continued to seek positions.
49. There was an upswing in the sciences and engineering at roughly the same time, but that was largely driven by the influx of foreign students, many of whom returned to professional positions in their countries of origin. Humanities students, by contrast, tend to be American citizens or permanent residents and seek employment in U.S. academic institutions. On general trends, see Roger Geiger, "Doctoral Education: The Short-Term Crisis vs. the Long-Term Challenge," The Review of Higher Education 20 (1997): 239-51.
50. William G. Bowen and Julie Ann Sosa, Prospects for Faculty in the Arts and Sciences: A Study of Factors Affecting Demand and Supply, 1987-2012 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). The study was news. See Debra E. Blum, "Big Faculty Shortage Seen in Humanities and Social Sciences," The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 1989.
51. Economics has a distinctive path; here, the reference is to political science and sociology.
52. This shift was partly prompted by the emphasis of the Mellon Foundation on "time to degree." Many of these departments reduced the number of students and improved funding in order to shorten that time.
53. For a similar study that uses U.S. News and World Report rankings, see Roark Atkinson, "Measuring Performance in Graduate History Programs," OAH Newsletter 29:2 (May 2001): 1. He finds a cutback in admissions among the top ten departments but some increase in departments ranked eleven to forty, with declines in departments ranked lower than forty.
54. Thirty-seven percent noted improvement, and the same percentage saw no change. Only 21 percent felt applicant quality had declined in the past five years. See Philip M. Katz, "CGE Update: How Good Are Today's Graduate Students?" Perspectives 40:2 (February 2002): 13-14.
55. For the general trend from 1979 to 2000, which also compares history with other disciplines, see figure 1.13.
56. Hoffer et al., Doctorate Recipients, 2000, table 13.
57. The complex implications of "feminization" in humanities disciplines are examined by Lynn Hunt, "Democratization and Decline? The Consequences of Demographic Change in the Humanities," in What Happened to the Humanities? ed. Alvin Kernan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 17-31, esp. 20-23 (quoted phrase on 20).
58. From the National Opinion Research Center, A Profile of Research Doctorates, 1960-2000 (Chicago: NORC, 2002), a special summary of the Survey of Earned Doctorates prepared for the American Historical Association.
59. Unfortunately, the U.S. Census Bureau does not have time-series data on specific levels of education beyond the bachelor's degree for adult males, so comparison of fathers with master's degrees with the general population is impossible.
60. For the early period, see Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 43.
61. On the problem of achieving adequate funding, see Geiger, "Doctoral Education," 245-46. The history Ph.D. cohort that completed their degrees in 1958 reported that only about one-third had stipends (though many had direct funding from the G.I. Bill). Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 149.
62. Student Financing of Graduate and First Professional Education, 1999-2000 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 2002). In 1958, one-third of history Ph.D.'s graduated in debt. Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 51. Ongoing research by Theresa Sullivan at the University of Texas suggests that undergraduate debt significantly affects career choices, including graduate school.
63. Ronald G. Ehrenberg, "Studying Ourselves: The Academic Labor Market," Presidential Address to the Annual Meeting of the Society of Labor Economists, Baltimore, May 2002, at http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/wp/cheri_wp23.pdf . See also the annual reports of the College and University Personnel Association, which document comparable trends in salaries.
64. Roger Geiger "The American University at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century: Signposts on the Path to Privatization," in Trends in American and German Higher Education, ed. Robert McC. Adams (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2002), 50-51.
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Chapter 1. We Historians, concluded ...
The Challenge
Aggregate data are useful for obtaining a large view, but they inevitably obscure important local cases.
Indeed, the point of this report is not to create a national model but to encourage a very close analysis of local situations informed by a clearer awareness of national patterns and the Committee's suggestions for improvement.
These suggestions cover a range of issues — recruitment, curriculum, academic standards, financial aid, professional development, preparation for a variety of professional careers, and placement, among others.
The urgency of bringing production and training of Ph.D.'s more nearly into line with desired and likely career opportunities for professional historians in the foreseeable future is a strong message we bring.
Doctoral programs that exist (or exist at their present scale) mainly to provide teaching assistants for the institution without consideration of the students' bleak employment prospects cannot be justified.
In reducing the size of Ph.D. programs, care must be taken to achieve this without unduly restricting access to advanced education and careers in history for groups underrepresented in the profession, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, or graduates from less-selective undergraduate institutions.
We are equally concerned that the profession better adapt its graduate curriculum to the intellectual directions of the discipline and the multiple career settings of historians, preparing them better for the everyday work that will be demanded of them in those careers.
1. Marilyn McMillen et al., Qualification for the Public School Work Force: Prevalence of Out-of-Field Teachers, 1987-88 to 1999-2000 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, (2002), 57-58; Diane Ravitch, "The Educational Backgrounds of History Teachers," in Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History, ed. Peter Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Sam Wineburg (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 143-55.
2. This formulation owes its inspiration — though not its precise conceptualization — to the distinction between discipline and profession offered to the Committee by James Banner.
3. Too often, the discipline is assimilated to the department and vice versa; they should be distinguished. The discipline is a set of scholarly protocols, while a department is an administrative arrangement for the management of higher education, often — but not always — organized by discipline. The department's importance will be discussed in chapters 2 and 3.
4. See the clarifying comment by Roger Chartier in Actes/Proceedings, 18th International Congress of Historical Sciences (Montreal: CISH, 1995), 154.
5. Tony Becher, Academic Tribes and Territories (Milton Keynes, Eng.: Open University Press, 1989), 159.
6. The Committee's survey of employers in public history revealed a widespread belief on their part that academic historians either cannot or will not adapt their presentations to general audiences.
7. Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University, 4th ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 142.
8. Christopher Jencks and Davis Riesman, The Academic Revolution (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968).
9. Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas, ACLS Occasional Paper No. 49 (New York: ACLS, 2001). See also Thomas Bender, "Politics, Intellect, and the University, 1945-1995," in American Academic Culture in Transformation, ed. Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 1-38.
10. See Dexter Perkins and John Snell, The Education of Historians in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), 21; Thomas Bender, Intellect and Public Life (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 159n.
11. From 3,025 in the 1950s to 8,134 in the 1990s.
12. Frank Scott and Jeff Anstine, "Critical Mass in the Production of Ph.D.'s: A Multidisciplinary Study," Economics of Education Review 21 (2002): 29-42, sec. 4.2.
13. The National Survey of Post Secondary Faculty (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 1999) reveals that slightly fewer than two-thirds of historians published at least one refereed article and fewer than one-half published a book, including edited volumes and textbooks.
14. Some of these issues are illuminated in Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
15. The post-September 11, 2001, job listings suggest that the trend will become clear and upward for the Middle East.
16. Robert B. Townsend, "Job Market Report, 2000: History Job Openings Continue to Surge," Perspectives (December 2000), esp. table 5.
17. Edward A. Goedeken and Jean-Pierre V. M. Herubel, "Periodical Dispersion in American History: Observations on Article Bibliographies from the Journal of American History," The Serials Librarian 27 (1995): 64.
18. Gordon S. Wood and Anthony Molho, "Introduction," in Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past, ed. Gordon S. Wood and Anthony Molho (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 3. It should be noted that in many foreign universities area studies are conducted in special institutes outside of disciplinary structures.
19. Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians in the United States.
20. Robert B. Townsend, "Status of Women and Minorities in the History Profession," Perspectives (April 2000). A recent general study that covers all disciplines at research universities considers salary as well as rank. It argues that considering rank, salary, and institutional type (research), very little progress has been made. See Cathy A. Trower and Richard P. Chait, "Faculty Diversity: Too Little for Too Long," Harvard Magazine 104:4 (March-April 2002). The data on retirement plans indicated later in this report suggest a significant alteration of these figures within a decade.
21. Thomas B. Hoffer et al., Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities: Summary Report 2000 (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 2001).
22. Quoted in Philip M. Katz, "CGE's E-mail Survey Focuses on Challenges in Graduate Training," Perspectives 39 (April 2001): 11-15.
23. These discussions are well under way, and new programs and courses are being developed. One thinks quickly of the Atlantic world, the African Diaspora, world history, and transnational approaches to national histories.
24. Eighty-five percent of respondents to the CGE Survey of Doctoral Programs reported that training graduate students for jobs at research universities was a high or moderate priority of their departments. Ninety-three percent said that training students for careers at comprehensive four-year institutions was also a high or moderate priority, but only 66 percent said that training for community college careers was a high or moderate priority. Fifty-one percent said that training historians for museums and historic sites was a low priority or no priority at all, and 79 percent said that training historians for careers in government service was a low priority or no priority at all.
25. On differentiation, see Burton R. Clark, Academic Life: Small Worlds, Different Worlds (Princeton, N.J.: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1987).
26. Doctoral institutions employ 7,476 historians; M.A.-level institutions, 5,713; B.A. institutions 3,330; community colleges, 8,043. Based on data from The National Study of Postsecondary Faculty.
27. See Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), for a recent discussion of this issue. See also Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York: Norton, 1994). For an important theoretical discussion of the issues raised by Novick, see Thomas L. Haskell, Objectivity Is Not Neutrality: Explanatory Themes in History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), chap. 6; James T. Kloppenberg, "Objectivity and Historians: A Century of American Historical Writing," American Historical Review 94 (1989): 1011-30.
28. William H. McNeill, The Shape of European History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).
29. See the early statement by Fernand Braudel, "History and the Social Sciences: The Long Term," in The Varieties of History, ed. Fritz Stern (New York: Vintage, 1972), 403-29. François Furet even more radically suggested that historians could dispense with temporality. See Furet, In the Workshop of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), chap. 3.
30. For an excellent brief summary of major changes in historiography, see George G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1997).
31. Caroline Walker Bynum, "The Last Eurocentric Generation," Perspectives 34 (February 1996): 3-4. See also Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
32. One should note a reciprocal development, the "historical turn" in the human sciences, which include the humanities and parts of the social sciences. See Terrence McDonald, ed., The Historical Turn in the Human Sciences (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, Practicing the New Historicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
33. This concern was articulated early in the current job crisis by John Hope Franklin, "On the 'Oversupply' of Graduate Students," Daedalus 103 (Fall 1974): 265-68.
34. Quoted in William B. Hesseltine and Louis Kaplan, "Doctors of Philosophy of History: A Statistical Study," American Historical Review 47 (1942): 775. For the initial vision of the doctoral program at Columbia, see Thomas Bender, Intellect and Public Life (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), chap. 4.
35. The increased ambitiousness of recent dissertations is striking, especially when compared with the description of dissertations in the 1950s offered by Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 150-52.
36. Chris M. Golde and Timothy Dore, At Cross Purposes: What the Experiences of Today's Doctoral Students Reveal about Doctoral Education (Philadelphia: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2001). Golde provides a more detailed look at the data pertaining to history graduate students in "The Career Goals of History Doctoral Students: Data from the Survey of Doctoral Education and Career Preparation," Perspectives 39 (October 2001): 21-26. The statistics in the next few paragraphs are drawn from these two studies.
37. Among historians, 70 percent responded as being "definitely" interested in faculty careers at the time of the survey; 81 percent indicated that at one time they had been definitely interested in a faculty career.
38. Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 162.
39. Search committees commonly voice this complaint, and the Committee members who participated in the Professional Division's Job Interview Workshop at the AHA Annual Meeting in January 2003 found this problem to be pervasive.
40. Our survey asked directors of graduate study to characterize the degree offered in their department. The "research-based teaching degree" option was selected by 42 percent of the respondents, while 47 percent selected "research degree." Thirteen percent characterized the degree as a "general purpose degree," and none considered it a "teaching degree." In 1958, the aim of most programs was described as the education of a "scholar-teacher." Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 141. For a well-documented study of the transition from the "teacher-scholar" to the "scholar-teacher" in one department (Stanford University) from 1890 to 1990, see Larry Cuban, How Scholars Trumped Teachers: Change without Reform in University Curriculum, Teaching, and Research, 1890-1990 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), chap. 3.
41. Golde and Dore, At Cross Purposes, 5. For similar findings, see Kathryn A. Adams, "What Colleges and Universities Want in New Faculty," Preparing Future Faculty Occasional Paper (Washington, D.C., 2002), http://www.grad.washington.edu/envision ... _Memo.html .
42. Debra Stewart, "The State of Graduate Education," presentation to the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools (February 20, 2000), 3, at http://www.csgs.org/dstewart.htm . See also the statement by David Ward, President of the American Council of Education, at http://www.cossa.org/transcript.htm#keynote . More generally, see Michael Gibbons et al., The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1994).
43. We wish to acknowledge the observations about possible futures offered by Professor John Higham during a Committee meeting in Washington, D.C., April 2002, particularly his warning about the risk of driving away the students we most treasure. Possible evidence of such a future is the proliferation and appeal of such transdisciplinary journals as Critical Inquiry, Representations, and Public Culture.
44. The report is available at http://www.theaha.org/pubs/redef.htm .
45. Ernest L. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: The Priorities of the Professoriate (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990).
46. In 1999, 15.4 percent of academic historians indicated that they expected to retire in one to five years; another 22.8 percent estimate six to ten years. See National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, NSOPF:99 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 2001).
47. Enrollment data in history courses are difficult to find over time, but data collected in the 1970s suggest that enrollments in a broad way track B.A.'s, with B.A.'s fairly steady between 1.8 percent and 2 percent of total enrollment. See "AHA Survey," AHA Newsletter 12 (September 1974): 1.
48. Of course, there was a backlog of job seekers from previous years, many of whom continued to seek positions.
49. There was an upswing in the sciences and engineering at roughly the same time, but that was largely driven by the influx of foreign students, many of whom returned to professional positions in their countries of origin. Humanities students, by contrast, tend to be American citizens or permanent residents and seek employment in U.S. academic institutions. On general trends, see Roger Geiger, "Doctoral Education: The Short-Term Crisis vs. the Long-Term Challenge," The Review of Higher Education 20 (1997): 239-51.
50. William G. Bowen and Julie Ann Sosa, Prospects for Faculty in the Arts and Sciences: A Study of Factors Affecting Demand and Supply, 1987-2012 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). The study was news. See Debra E. Blum, "Big Faculty Shortage Seen in Humanities and Social Sciences," The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 1989.
51. Economics has a distinctive path; here, the reference is to political science and sociology.
52. This shift was partly prompted by the emphasis of the Mellon Foundation on "time to degree." Many of these departments reduced the number of students and improved funding in order to shorten that time.
53. For a similar study that uses U.S. News and World Report rankings, see Roark Atkinson, "Measuring Performance in Graduate History Programs," OAH Newsletter 29:2 (May 2001): 1. He finds a cutback in admissions among the top ten departments but some increase in departments ranked eleven to forty, with declines in departments ranked lower than forty.
54. Thirty-seven percent noted improvement, and the same percentage saw no change. Only 21 percent felt applicant quality had declined in the past five years. See Philip M. Katz, "CGE Update: How Good Are Today's Graduate Students?" Perspectives 40:2 (February 2002): 13-14.
55. For the general trend from 1979 to 2000, which also compares history with other disciplines, see figure 1.13.
56. Hoffer et al., Doctorate Recipients, 2000, table 13.
57. The complex implications of "feminization" in humanities disciplines are examined by Lynn Hunt, "Democratization and Decline? The Consequences of Demographic Change in the Humanities," in What Happened to the Humanities? ed. Alvin Kernan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 17-31, esp. 20-23 (quoted phrase on 20).
58. From the National Opinion Research Center, A Profile of Research Doctorates, 1960-2000 (Chicago: NORC, 2002), a special summary of the Survey of Earned Doctorates prepared for the American Historical Association.
59. Unfortunately, the U.S. Census Bureau does not have time-series data on specific levels of education beyond the bachelor's degree for adult males, so comparison of fathers with master's degrees with the general population is impossible.
60. For the early period, see Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 43.
61. On the problem of achieving adequate funding, see Geiger, "Doctoral Education," 245-46. The history Ph.D. cohort that completed their degrees in 1958 reported that only about one-third had stipends (though many had direct funding from the G.I. Bill). Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 149.
62. Student Financing of Graduate and First Professional Education, 1999-2000 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 2002). In 1958, one-third of history Ph.D.'s graduated in debt. Perkins and Snell, Education of Historians, 51. Ongoing research by Theresa Sullivan at the University of Texas suggests that undergraduate debt significantly affects career choices, including graduate school.
63. Ronald G. Ehrenberg, "Studying Ourselves: The Academic Labor Market," Presidential Address to the Annual Meeting of the Society of Labor Economists, Baltimore, May 2002, at http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/wp/cheri_wp23.pdf . See also the annual reports of the College and University Personnel Association, which document comparable trends in salaries.
64. Roger Geiger "The American University at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century: Signposts on the Path to Privatization," in Trends in American and German Higher Education, ed. Robert McC. Adams (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2002), 50-51.
Contact
Phone: 202.544.2422
Email: info@historians.org
400 A Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
https://www.historians.org/about-aha-an ... historians