Alternative Careers for Humanities PhDs

[greenmt]

Last fall, I applied to English Lit. PhD programs.  I have an established career in nonprofit management / development and, in my personal statement, I spoke about how a PhD would help me to focus and build upon what I already do.  I also had a very well-defined subject area, that grows out of work I did in a MA program about a decade ago, and a clear idea of my prospective thesis topic.  In other words, I wanted to do the scholarly work, participate in conferences, publish: the only difference is that I did not intend to seek a tenure track gig at the end.  I applied only to programs that I thought would support the scholarly work, and to which I thought I could contribute something of substance in my field of inquiry.  

 

All of the programs to which I applied take care to warn applicants that the job market for tenured teaching / research positions is very tight.  Some programs talk about alternative career pathways for their graduates.  I got in the habit of looking at lists of graduates, for: a) names affiliated with software companies and other for-profits, nonprofit organizations, cultural institutions, and foundations / the NEH; and how the program talked about these graduates, and about non-academic jobs.  Being by nature a close-reader, I was trying to glean whether they considered these graduates somehow less than those who went on to tenure track positions.  Some programs / Graduate Admissions sites offer specific advice about seeking work with a PhD outside academia.  To an extent, this informed my choices about where to apply.  In the end, I didn't get in, probably for reasons other than my goals, though it's hard to know.... 

 

Having gone through the process, and discussed this topic with several folks in tenured positions, including people who sit on admissions committees, it occurs to me that the pathway toward alternative careers for those with PhDs might still be more aspirational than real; or said another way, commonly seen, in English Departments, at least, as a next-best choice.  The programs might talk about alternatives, but all of their systems are geared toward preparing researcher/teachers.  For example, grad school financial aid is typically tied to a teaching schedule or a research project.  This seems strange to me, given that many Humanities departments are home to nonprofit cultural centers, museums, musical and theatrical presenters, archives, digital humanities centers, and publishing companies: non-tenure/teaching institutions that are as often as not staffed and managed by PhDs.  There are many ways a PhD provides useful preparation for nonprofit work, and I for one would like to see more PhDs doing the kind of work I've been doing for the last 15 years.

 

Has anyone else applied to Humanities PhD programs with the intention of seeking work other than tenured research / teaching gigs? Did you talk about it in your application / personal statement?  Did you have to take special pains to explain your pathway?  Did you feel "heard" by Admissions committees?  Were you supported by your program, in terms of professional development toward your path, to a degree similar to peers who sought teaching gigs? 

 

The shrinking number of tenured gigs, and the tendency to admit and prepare shrinking cohorts of scholars for those gigs, does not bode well for the future of Humanities scholarships, in my opinion.  Math and science PhDs have established networks for applying their scholarly work out in the world.  Do those networks exist (outside of a few opt-in networking sites such as Versatile PhD), and I'm missing them?  Seems to me that until Humanities departments - i.e. the scholars themselves - actively support alternative pathways, such as providing professional development, they'll always be second-best.  Is this happening especially well anywhere?  Thanks.

Edited April 17, 2014 by gholmes1965

[VirtualMessage]

Supposedly places like Vanderbilt (English PhD) are emphasizing alternative pathways, but I think that this is reactionary to the abysmal state of the academic job market. It does not seem to me that most graduate programs have taken substantial and meaningful action in response to the devastation of the humanities. I am sure they are having all sorts of "conversations," but my experience has been that most people with a stake in humanities graduate education are hoping that inertia will save them from painful changes. I do not think it will. It is great that you have this professional non-profit experience. The sad truth is that most faculty members understand success in very narrow terms. They value the graduate students who achieve the success that reflects their own accomplishments, and they ignore the rest.  I can imagine many admissions committees dismissing your aspirations because they do not validate their own choices--choices that are increasingly dangerous for hopeful young people to make. To responsibly educate young scholars, English PhD programs should start supplementing funding offers with options to obtain a teaching credential. Maybe an MA in education option? Something tangible. It is a bitter irony that you can graduate from a top PhD program and be unqualified to teach high-school language arts without additional degrees/certificates. 

Edited April 8, 2015 by VirtualMessage

[brown_eyed_girl]

In my field, Art History, many people go into PhD programs with the intent of being museum curators (PhD is required for most curators) rather than professors, and it is simply seen as one of the other main ways to use the degree. The same may be less true of other humanities fields, though.  

[random_grad]

If you make a compelling case of why you think a PhD is necessary for you to further your non-academic career, I'm sure you would find a place which would be interested in training you. However, most programs are geared toward research or college teaching and I think this is reasonable. A PhD takes too long to complete to be an equivelent replacement to actual work experience (with the exception of careers in certain fields which actually require a PhD , such as museum work mentioned above, in which case a department would be used to people saying that as career goals in the SOP). Otherwise, Professional MAs are here for that. What would a PhD give you that the same number of years working wouldn't? The Dr. title? Or rather, how could one expect to get professional connections in the workforce by spending 5y in the library? Additionally, why should a university/the government invest all that money in you if you don't intend to serve the Academia forever and ever? Unless a person does an unfunded PhD, of course Professors would not be too happy to see you leave the field.

That being said, those who choose a different path do not always do so because of poor job prospects. I met a person who had a tenure-track job with solid prospects but chose to leave. A PhD may help a person realise it's not for them, then people get creative with their career paths and some schools have ways to help with networks, workshops and councellors. baby steps, true,but retraining should not happen on the payrol of the university and there are already fast-track professional degrees available.

Edited April 14, 2015 by random_grad

[greenmt]

I appreciate that you commented.  I remember noting that, after a posted this, a bunch of people looked at it, but no one commented.  I suspect that says something about the kinds of conversations that are (not) happening in Humanities PhD programs, or maybe even the things people are expected not to say there.  It's possible it's only an issue for me, because of my particular background.  But I see a contradiction in the unwillingness of "a university/the government [to] invest all that money in you if you don't intend to serve the Academia forever and ever" when everyone seems to agree that there aren't enough spaces available for everyone to do that by researching / teaching in 4 year colleges.  (I've done a bunch of research on this in the year since I first posted, and I think the anxiety is overstated, but that's another topic.)  Also, I would assert that there are many ways to serve the field - whether the humanities generally or a given particular field - outside the academy.  In the last 20 years, museums and performing arts orgs, among others, have realized they need to reach out and engage the general public, first in order to survive, and second because they have something to offer that's of value to people outside the usual audiences.  I don't like *why* that's happened - it has a lot to do with the replacement of government funding with private and corporate funding - but as someone who grew up feeling excluded from that world, I like that it has happened.  I say the humanities are essential, because they offer ways of thinking and knowing that can only come about through the kinds of engagement that historians, literary folks, and the like engage in.  But why should anyone who hasn't had those experiences believe me?  That work - moving humanities scholarship into the public realm - is also a valuable way to serve the field, and might make the difference in the survival of the field as we know it.  Because you know that computer scientists are making the case that government funding should go to their scholarly endeavors.  The notion of STEM didn't arise out of thin air.

 

All that said, the kinds of jobs that I envision as a possible outcome of my PhD study are roughly equivalent to museum curator.  They include: private and public funders, historic houses and museums, archives, humanities centers, nonprofit associations, and the like.  Some explicitly require a PhD, others just always go to the person with the PhD.  I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't care about the work I'm proposing to do, because it does seem like a lot of effort just to get a job.  But there are job-related skills that a PhD course, and writing a dissertation, are helpful in developing, which translate well into the skills needed in nonprofit-land, at least: research, writing, working with byzantine bureaucracies and still getting the thing done, envisioning, planning, and carrying out a long-term, large-scale project.  I still don't get why humanities departments - which, after all, are often connected with humanities centers, museums, and the like - don't offer alternate professionalization tracks, if the job market is so bad.  But the last year has shown me, at least, a way to keep both tracks going simultaneously.

Edited April 15, 2015 by greenmt

[random_grad]

I am 100% with you on the idea that reaching out to the public is the way to go for humanities. It s awesome that you work in that direction! It is unfortunate that not all universities think about this enough (from what you say) but many do so more and more (from what I noticed). I gather you did find a dpt open to the idea?

The rate of new PhDs to jobs is notoriously disbalanced... I consider PhD as a gamble on your own ability to be one of those few who gets a job. It is a competition all the way: not all finish the undergrad, few get into grad school, half don t complete the PhD and not all get the job they want. But without trying you ll never know if you re the one who succeeds. the fact that the overall attitude that "not getting an academic job means failure" is strong in some fields was acknowledged at career events for grad students who leave academia that I attended. But as rightly noted at those same events, It s all in your head and a matter of perspective: anyone outside of academia might of course be jealous of a person becoming a professor b/c of the ingrained attitude that professors "just teach 2 courses" (an attitude we all need to work hard to dispel) but if you don't and get a non-profit job instead the average person will not perceive it as failure.

[greenmt]

I'd like to "like" this but I'm out of upvotes, so please accept this verbal version. I think I did find a program that is a bit more flexible and outward looking.  We'll see.  I'm starting this fall....  My advisor does a lot of public-humanities stuff, and knows what my intentions are, so that helps.  

 

From what I've seen the job market is cyclical, so folks who entered in 2006 or 2007 (rightly) had a different job market in mind than the one into which they are graduating.  I can't say, nor can anyone, what the market will look like five or eight years from now, but if it follows patterns from the last 20-30 years, chances are good that there'll be both a lot more jobs being listed, a higher proportion of them tenure-track jobs.  So in fact it might not be a terrible time to *enter* a PhD program, though it seems like a rotten time to be *leaving* one.

[random_grad]

That's good to hear! All the best with your PhD!