Finding Graduate Placements

[lordtiandao]

I'm wondering if there is a place where I can find placements of recent history department graduates of a particular school and/or professor. I was told that this information should be in the public domain, but I can't seem to find any for the programs I want to apply to. Does anyone know? Thanks in advance! 

[Tigla]

If I remember correctly, the American Historical Association publishes this type of information in their yearly book. I would check with your institution and see if they carry a copy of the book. If not, then maybe the chairman/woman or a professor may have a copy of the book. If that fails, then I would start google searching some prominent professors and authors in your field of interest and looking at the footnotes in some articles you have read previously. Another way to find potential professors is to ask a couple professors at your institution.

Also, you might get some help here. What are your interests? Any specific region or timeframe? Methodology or theories?

[KLZ]

I might be wrong, but I think the AHA only requests the following information from graduate programs on a yearly basis: # of new students enrolled in each degree program; total students enrolled (part & full time, per degree); # of degrees awarded per degree. I don't think they collect data on job placements, but I could be wrong. Anyone have a clear idea? 

The information on placements is notoriously difficult to track down. Each department (and graduate school by extension) has to collect this data from their graduates on an ongoing basis and keep it up to date. Some schools do a better job than others. The first place you will want to look is on the history department's website for each institution you want to consider (which it sounds like you are doing). Georgetown does a great job of keeping on top of their placements. Others, like Duke, may have a placement page listed on their website, but have not kept up with tracking this information. If you can't find any information on a given department's site, the next place you might look is the Graduate School's website. 

You could email the graduate programs assistant, or (possibly) the director of graduate studies, for each program you are interested in to request this information. They should have a better idea about recent placements. 

[TMP]

Most definitely e-mail the Director of Graduate Studies or the graduate program coordinators.  They will know the best.  I know, I agree, such information should be on public domain but .... there is an issue of PhDs still trying to find jobs and tracking them down after they've "disappeared".  

As you receive responses, remember the following things:

(A) Not everyone wants to go to into academia or get a job related to history after they finish.  The PhD does take a lot out of people.  So it is really not fair these days to judge a program's ability to place students in academic positions. You'll need to do a little more digging to go beyond the "grain of salt" approach.... and here's what you need to do:

(1) Certainly fields do much better than others in obtaining jobs.  For example, Middle Eastern historians are in demand in multiple sectors, not just the higher ed.  It is tempting to take a relatively lucrative job with reasonable hours in DC than a tenure-track job in a rural area.

(2) Department and university funding and outside fellowships do play critical roles helping the PhD student land a job.  Programs with solid and guaranteed funding packages and a record of landing Fulbright, Social Sciences Research Council, and other major prestigious fellowships will do much better at placing their PhDs than programs with barely adequate funds.  So, look at graduate students' ages and search their names on google for their Academia.edu profiles, which may or may not include their CVs, to see how well they are doing.

(B) Understand that the faculty do play a role in preparing and placing PhDs, especially the adviser.  Some professors excel at this type of mentorship while others don't give a damn and expect PhDs to figure everything out.  So it is important to talk to graduate students when you visit the campus after acceptance about this.

 

[gsc]

7 minutes ago, TMP said:

(2) Department and university funding and outside fellowships do play critical roles helping the PhD student land a job.  Programs with solid and guaranteed funding packages and a record of landing Fulbright, Social Sciences Research Council, and other major prestigious fellowships will do much better at placing their PhDs than programs with barely adequate funds.  So, look at graduate students' ages and search their names on google for their Academia.edu profiles, which may or may not include their CVs, to see how well they are doing.

all of TMP's advice is excellent but I especially wanted to highlight this.

Raw placement data is a good place to start, but in and of itself it's never going to be the whole story. It's not the "program" in the abstract that places students so much as it is the program (and the institution as a whole) that provides resources crucial to landing jobs. So you want to work backwards from the end point. To land a job, you'll need a good interview, to even get an interview you'll need a good CV, to get a good CV you'll need money/support, to get that money... etc, etc. With this in mind you can ask more targeted questions than just "do students at this program get jobs."** Does the program care about professional development? Do they hold mock job talks for students on the market, or workshops about how to publish or get grants? Some universities have whole offices dedicated to helping graduate students secure external funding opportunities. How much time will you have to focus solely on your research, or will you be splitting your time between research and teaching the whole way through? Will you have to pay your own way to conferences, or is there travel money from either the department or the university? Et cetera. 

** That said, in my experience a great time to ask "do students at this program get jobs" is when you're meeting with a prospective advisor — where have their students ended up? That can often be a more useful and specific barometer for your future in the program. 

[lordtiandao]

Thanks for the advice! Any idea on what I should write in the e-mail to the Director of Graduate Studies?

I found the information for some of the programs on the department website, but many has not posted it. I'm just kind of worried because I was told by another professor that one of the professors whom I am really interested in working with has placed no students in academic positions in the past ten years...

[Sigaba]

29 minutes ago, lordtiandao said:

I'm just kind of worried because I was told by another professor that one of the professors whom I am really interested in working with has placed no students in academic positions in the past ten years...

Which is the more important objective? To work with this professor or to get an academic job? If it is the latter, you'll need to figure out how to frame your interests, your fields, and your committees.

IRT finding how many students of a professor have gotten academic positions, figure out a way to get a list of the dissertations the professor has supervised and go from there.

[lordtiandao]

7 hours ago, Sigaba said:

Which is the more important objective? To work with this professor or to get an academic job? If it is the latter, you'll need to figure out how to frame your interests, your fields, and your committees.

IRT finding how many students of a professor have gotten academic positions, figure out a way to get a list of the dissertations the professor has supervised and go from there.

Haven't considered looking at dissertations. I went ahead and looked at a couple and so far it seems promising. One of the professor's recent graduates is now on a tenured position at CalTech. 

I think both objectives are important to me. I believe this person can really benefit my research, but at the same time I do want to get an academic job.

[pudewen]

On 9/13/2017 at 10:35 AM, lordtiandao said:

Haven't considered looking at dissertations. I went ahead and looked at a couple and so far it seems promising. One of the professor's recent graduates is now on a tenured position at CalTech. 

I think both objectives are important to me. I believe this person can really benefit my research, but at the same time I do want to get an academic job.

Going to UCLA to do a PhD in Chinese History is definitely not going to be the thing that prevents you from getting a job. (Also, FYI, funding at UCLA is a lot better than it was even 10 years ago, so you'll be much better supported than a fair number of the PhD students who finished in the past decade, which is a big help, though as the example of the CalTech asst prof shows, the claim about no students of your prospective advisor getting jobs in the past 10 years is not true. BTW, said CalTech asst prof did really well in the job market, even aside from the job she ended up taking).

[Sigaba]

On 9/13/2017 at 7:35 AM, lordtiandao said:

Haven't considered looking at dissertations. I went ahead and looked at a couple and so far it seems promising. One of the professor's recent graduates is now on a tenured position at CalTech. 

I think both objectives are important to me. I believe this person can really benefit my research, but at the same time I do want to get an academic job.

https://secure.historians.org/pubs/dissertations/index.cfm 

#HTH

[lordtiandao]

19 hours ago, pudewen said:

Going to UCLA to do a PhD in Chinese History is definitely not going to be the thing that prevents you from getting a job. (Also, FYI, funding at UCLA is a lot better than it was even 10 years ago, so you'll be much better supported than a fair number of the PhD students who finished in the past decade, which is a big help, though as the example of the CalTech asst prof shows, the claim about no students of your prospective advisor getting jobs in the past 10 years is not true. BTW, said CalTech asst prof did really well in the job market, even aside from the job she ended up taking).

That's good to know. The information was relayed to me by a professor from another department, so that was why I wanted to find placement results to make sure.

[lordtiandao]

13 hours ago, Sigaba said:

https://secure.historians.org/pubs/dissertations/index.cfm 

#HTH

Great, thank you!

[psstein]

The AHA is a good source but not the be all, end all. My advisor isn't on the list, though she's supervised quite a few dissertations. 

The best sources often come from the departments proper, though some are more hesitant to provide them than others. Also, keep in mind that those figures don't tell the whole truth. "Academic, non-tenure track" could mean something as nice as a one year replacement appointment or something as awful as adjuncting.