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Louis de Montalte

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Everything posted by Louis de Montalte

  1. It's probably worth bumping this thread back to the top since everything in it still applies...
  2. I don't know the British or Australian scenes as well as I know the US one, but I'll give this a go. My sense is that the job market situation is at least as dire for UK PhDs as for US PhDs. The job market is ultra competitive in the UK. If anything, there is probably a greater oversupply of historians. British PhDs are also at a disadvantage on the US job market. The US assumption is that the training and mentoring UK PhDs receive is not as rigorous as that provided by US programs. UK theses are often a bit less developed given the time constraints. Funding is generally a lot worse--or, at least, much harder to come by--in the UK. I think that Australian PhDs would have an even more difficult time in the US or UK job markets than British PhDs. I should also mention that the market for European history is particularly dire. On the flip side, spending three years doing a PhD is a very different proposition than spending 7+ years. It won't eat up all of your youth. So if you are interested in spending three years of your life doing something intellectually stimulating and potentially living in an interesting place, don't mind never getting an academic job, and have decent funding, I say go ahead with a UK or Australian PhD. I generally don't recommend investing that time into a US PhD. Also, the average reader of popular history books or consumer of YouTube content will be at least as impressed by an Oxford DPhil as a Berkeley PhD. You will certainly grow as a historian and writer.
  3. I know something about this and there is some serious misinformation in this thread. Tuition at SBTS is not 34K or 55K per year. It's 34k (for SBC students) or 55k (for non-SBC students) for the entire program, paid over four years. The vast majority of students will pay the SBTS rate (if they aren't already members of an SBC church, they can join one). So it turns out to be a bit more than $8,000 per year. Tuition at SBC seminaries is heavily subsidized by the SBC's Cooperative program. It's pretty much the lowest you'll find at any seminary, but there isn't a big discount rate. OP, the PhD programs at SBTS and SWBTS are really designed to create pastor-scholars. If that's what you want to do, it's a good option. It's flexible in terms of scheduling and affordable enough that a lot of people can pay as they go. You should think of it as an expanded, more rigorous ThM with a research bent. But if you want to go into academia, you should not do a PhD at an SBC school (or probably most other evangelical schools). It won't just be a hinderance for job hunting. It will positively disqualify you for virtually all jobs at secular universities and mainline/liberal seminaries. It won't be very competitive at evangelical colleges or seminaries either where you would be competing with people with PhDs from major universities in the US and UK, as well as Wheaton, Trinity, etc. There is a large number of people with PhDs from SBTS or SWBTS who end up teaching at Baptist colleges or SBC seminaries, but they represent only a small percentage of the total graduates. As for publishing, there is no reason in principle that you can't publish with a PhD from an SBC seminary, but the training you'll get will prepare you more to serve the church and the evangelical academy. Based on what you have suggested about your interests, I think you should probably turn down both offers.
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