University Affairs (CAN) article: The PhD conversion experience

[apl68]

What exactly is a 'cognate history' to being a history prof?

Well, I don't want to tell you exactly what it was because that would essentially be "outing" myself. That said, a "cognate industry" is a field that is not academic history but which requires postgraduate study in history to get a job. There are not that many such fields (which is one of the reasons alt-ac jobs are not that big a thing in history). They include various publishing and editorial work that are not teaching or researching history but in which familiarity with history is necessary.

Also certain kinds of archival and library bibliography work.  I considered for a time trying to use my own grad experience in history to get a position with a research library.  That's what one of my bosses at the research library where I worked had done.

[mleok]

I'm unclear how the author proposes to create jobs for Ph.D.s who cannot be hired into traditional tenure-track positions, I assume the proposed solution is based on the so called reformation of the church of knowledge, but at least in STEM, there has been a decrease in corporate funding of basic research in their own research labs. Put another way, this is not going to be solved without addressing the oversupply issue.

It would be great if there was a lot more funding for libraries, outreach, foundations and all the rest. It just seems weird to think that somehow this is going to happen independently of what is happening at colleges and universities. If there isn't institutional support for creating more permanent positions to teach in colleges in universities, where is all this money to fund positions outside of the academy going to come from?

Indeed, I think there is a strong element of wishful thinking in that article, and even if it is true that there is a demand for PhD trained scholars who are able to engage in interdisciplinary work, it's unclear that the current system prepares students well for that. But, if that is the proposed salvation for the system, then a move towards making sure that PhD students are better equipped to interact productively with scholars from other fields would be a desirable change, from my perspective.

This just reminds me of a Sidney Harris cartoon, where a mathematician is writing on a board, and there is a big gap which says, "then a miracle occurs," and the other mathematician points out, "I think you should be more explicit here in step two."

http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/pages/gallery.php

[apl68]

That was my favorite Sidney Harris cartoon!

[kaysixteen]

Sure, library/ archive work is a cognate industry, but you ain't getting that job without an MLS.

How did you get the cognate industry job, jerseyjay?  Did you find it yourself or did your grad school professors and/or university career counseling service help you to do so?

[Hibush]

Sure, library/ archive work is a cognate industry, but you ain't getting that job without an MLS.

How did you get the cognate industry job, jerseyjay?  Did you find it yourself or did your grad school professors and/or university career counseling service help you to do so?

This is anecdata, but where I most run into history majors is a lobbyists in Washington DC. They are good at what they do, and in a sense are making history.  That kind of work is probably not considered a normal career path. Is lobbying a cognate industry?

[jerseyjay]

Perhaps lobbying is a false cognate industry.... There are also a fair number of politicians with history PhDs (George McGovern, Newt Gingrich, Gordon Brown) but I would not think that will solve the problems in the historical profession.

I found the job myself. Since I was more than a decade and another country away from getting my doctorate, my connections with my graduate school or advisor were (and are) greatly attenuated. All of my colleagues either had doctorates or had dropped out of grad school before finishing the dissertation. Having a doctorate, and experience teaching and researching, was a requirement for the job, but was not actually involved in the doing the job. The company regularly recruited at the AHA, back when there were meetings and recruitment at them.

The job was not really the type of job that anybody would go to grad school for (although it was in itself a decent job), but given the oversupply of PhDs in history, it regularly was able to hire good people.

Library work would also be such a "cognate" field. I considered it, but the positions I looked at required, ideally, a master's in archival work (although they may have accepted a MLS). It did not seem worth it to go into debt to earn another degree and then face a market that didn't seem all that better than the academic history market.

So my original point was that there are jobs besides professor that a PhD in history would be considered a necessity, but these were not plentiful enough to warrant going to graduate school in history.  This is probably different that, getting a PhD in some other fields in which non-academic employment is very common.  I would hope that grad students and advisors would be open to non-academic employment, but these jobs do not in themselves justify churning out vastly more PhDs than academic jobs exist.

[Caracal]

Sure, library/ archive work is a cognate industry, but you ain't getting that job without an MLS.

How did you get the cognate industry job, jerseyjay?  Did you find it yourself or did your grad school professors and/or university career counseling service help you to do so?

This is anecdata, but where I most run into history majors is a lobbyists in Washington DC. They are good at what they do, and in a sense are making history.  That kind of work is probably not considered a normal career path. Is lobbying a cognate industry?

A couple of people I went to grad school with work as researchers for foundations. You do pick up all kinds of skills in the process of writing a dissertation which would be helpful for that kind of work, but the degree itself isn't a qualification for it, and finishing a PHD isn't a very efficient path towards that kind of career.

I think this is where the obsession with adjuncts who live in their cars results in people losing sight of the actual problems. The actual career outcomes for people who get humanities PHDs-at least in history-aren't really that bad. Most of the people who fail to secure tenure track jobs find  decent work outside of the profession. We don't need a jobs program for PHDs

[marshwiggle]

Sure, library/ archive work is a cognate industry, but you ain't getting that job without an MLS.

How did you get the cognate industry job, jerseyjay?  Did you find it yourself or did your grad school professors and/or university career counseling service help you to do so?

This is anecdata, but where I most run into history majors is a lobbyists in Washington DC. They are good at what they do, and in a sense are making history.  That kind of work is probably not considered a normal career path. Is lobbying a cognate industry?

A couple of people I went to grad school with work as researchers for foundations. You do pick up all kinds of skills in the process of writing a dissertation which would be helpful for that kind of work, but the degree itself isn't a qualification for it, and finishing a PHD isn't a very efficient path towards that kind of career.

I think this is where the obsession with adjuncts who live in their cars results in people losing sight of the actual problems. The actual career outcomes for people who get humanities PHDs-at least in history-aren't really that bad. Most of the people who fail to secure tenure track jobs find  decent work outside of the profession. We don't need a jobs program for PHDs

So are you saying the adjunct problem is largely a myth? Or blown completely out of proportion?

[jerseyjay]

I think that there are two different things going on.

First, somebody with postgraduate education in, say English or history or philosophy, especially with studies at prestigious schools, could probably get a decent white collar job. This is especially true when one considers that such people tend to be better educated than the population as a whole. Nonetheless, for most people in this category, their postgraduate studies are not necessary for the jobs they get, or in any case their specific studies are not necessary.

Second, there are many people who devote quite a bit of time studying for a career that they are not going to get. And this is not so much because there is no need for people to do this type of job, but because for most people it is impossible to make a living doing it. In my experience, if one is an experienced history professor, one can always find classes to teach. And if one is a good researcher, one can continue to publish articles and books. But most of the classes are as part-time lecturers with little pay and no benefits, and academic publishing only pays off if you have a full-time job. In fact, the functioning of many universities depends on having an army of adjuncts, postdocs, visiting professors, and grad students, who do much work for little pay.

So people spend a long time chasing a job that they won't get, providing necessary skilled (measured by education) labor for relatively low wages. To do well requires turning one's back on the entire system--by leaving academia altogether, or at least getting a non-academic job and teaching or researching as a side-project. Yet if people stopped going to grad school or stopped being adjuncts, it would have a detrimental effect on many schools.