A recent article in the New York Times paints a bleak picture of job prospects for graduate students completing their doctoral degrees.  The obvious career path for anyone with a Ph.D. is a faculty position at a university or college.  The economic crisis, combined with long-term declines in funding for higher education, means that tenure-track professorships are getting harder and harder to come by.   And the prognosis for someone getting a Ph.D. in History…well, it’s not pretty.

Many in the humanities fear that their fields are going to suffer most. Humanities professors are already among the lowest-paid faculty members, according to the Humanities Indicators Prototype, a new, decade-long effort to establish a database of information led by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  What’s more, nearly half of all the positions are part time — with no job security and no benefits — a situation that many educators expect to worsen.

It’s a good thing that I didn’t enter the doctoral program with the assumption that I would become a university professor.  Additionally, I’m glad that I have ten years of non-profit management experience to market when I do finish my degree and start looking for a job.  And, I hope for all our sakes, that when I graduate in 2-3 years the economy will be greatly improved.  Of course, this might be a bit optimistic — not the prospect of economic improvement but the prospect of graduation.  The article refers several times to Ph.D. students taking 8-9 years to write their dissertations.  Another 7 years as a graduate student working on my dissertation?  Now that’s a scary thought!