tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18775905554430416012009-12-06T03:01:06.858-07:00Data and Discussion of the Discipline's DoctoratesPhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.comBlogger1412625tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-21244158990458947492008-06-03T08:26:00.001-07:002008-06-03T09:14:00.271-07:00

A friend forwarded a job ad to me. The community college who sponsored the ad was looking for a history instructor who would teach six to eight courses per semester. This sounded unusual, so she inquired at the college. She was told that the instructors worked "only" 30 hours each week: 5 hours for office hours and 18 to 24 hours in the classroom (three hours per class). This is disingenuous,

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-49353388011836409752008-05-29T21:50:00.000-07:002008-05-29T22:57:24.352-07:00

Last month I started a survey. Twenty seven individuals responded. Below is a quick summary of the kinds of the people who filled out the survey.About two thirds have been AHA members for less than 10 years. Around half attended 1 or 2 of the last five AHA conventions. Close to two thirds pay membership dues to two, three, or four scholarly associations. Nearly half are bloggers. Half said

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-9546805523872218612008-05-04T18:37:00.004-07:002008-05-04T18:56:50.786-07:00

The Center for History and New Media is about to embark on a two-year project to adapt the technology of text mining to the work of historians (see here and here). Often, projections of what text mining can do for historians have left readers with the impression that this new technology will create a specialized search engine for historians to find the primary sources that closely match their

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-67590555531325811982008-04-28T21:24:00.002-07:002008-04-28T22:29:47.743-07:00

Between the early 1960s and early 1980s, less than 2 percent of high school graduates took either AP U.S. History or AP European History. Last year, one out of every six high school students who graduated had taken an AP history exam. Once a test for the elite in our society, AP History Exams have boomed in recent years and maybe even become mainstream. For more details, check out the chart

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-16585362269818948112008-04-28T12:46:00.000-07:002008-04-28T13:35:18.984-07:00

Inside Higher Ed has a new report out on how the National Science Foundation is suppressing an increasing amount of information about the numbers on PhDs earned by students of color. The NSF says it is making this change to its annual Survey of Earned Doctorates out of privacy concerns. In most cases, this means that the NSF will no longer reveal the number of minorities earning PhDs in

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-91397653734525237732008-04-21T07:23:00.006-07:002008-04-21T09:36:04.075-07:00

I have followed the discussion and debate about the AHA over the last few months. Over the weekend I put together a survey, using the Survey Manager tool available at the Center for History and New Media web site. The survey consists of a series of statements. I tried to capture the range of opinions and proposals that have appeared. You will find statements that are quite critical of the AHA and

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-65600108406667565222008-04-15T22:45:00.001-07:002008-04-15T23:18:45.081-07:00

Cross-posted at Progressive Historians:There are now only about half a dozen other disciplines in the academy that pay their faculty less then what history faculty are paid. The pay gap for history faculty has been widening since at least the late 1990s. Back then tenured history faculty earned only 2 to 3 percent less than the average tenured faculty in all other disciplines. As of this

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-81223340089325789822008-04-15T11:53:00.002-07:002008-04-15T12:05:48.063-07:00

Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent:I think it is a mistake to assume the Working Group on the Future of the AHA is proposing more institutional blogs for the AHA. I believe every member of this working group believes in academic freedom and the importance of allowing individuals to voice their opinions on personal or group blogs. When the working group talks about the AHA serving as "gatekeeper

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-30749956938549375512008-04-13T22:58:00.003-07:002008-04-13T23:19:43.742-07:00

The Working Group on the Future of the AHA has an excellent idea. There may be 190,000 AP history teachers in U.S. high schools. Surely some of these teachers would be interested in joining the AHA. The members of the working group recommend that the AHA come up with "special dues categories and benefits to attract high school teachers." They also say that as much as a quarter of the sessions

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-43654484612034167302008-04-10T10:22:00.000-07:002008-04-10T10:56:12.090-07:00

Bill Chafe's article, titled "Final Report and Recommendations of the Working Group on the Future of the AHA," just appeared in Perspectives. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the future of the history profession. You may not find yourself agreeing with everything the authors say, but the discussion is important nonetheless. I plan to devote several posts over the next few weeks to

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-89529680245405704642008-04-01T12:25:00.001-07:002008-04-02T07:21:36.468-07:00

Sometimes the job market forecasts produced by Robert B. Townsend and the AHA have been criticized for leaving out the "backlog." One of these critiques came from Ted W. Margadant in a Perspectives article in 1999. He observed that "new PhDs face competition from the huge backlog of over 4,000 history PhDs since 1989 who do not yet have tenure-track jobs in history departments." I am not

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-87528968916391444022008-03-15T16:38:00.000-07:002008-03-15T16:42:03.873-07:00

Cross-posted at ProgressiveHistorians:I think history had a golden age and Richard White disagrees. It guess it all depends on which criteria we use when making this determination. I happen to think historians should be evaluated on how well they connect with the public.Sam Tanenhaus got us thinking about this issue about a year ago with his claim in the New York Times that, after the death of

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-89222868960851288862008-03-12T19:55:00.001-07:002008-03-12T20:05:31.381-07:00

It is a demonstrated fact that female faculty in history face a "leaky pipeline" when it comes to rank advancement. The AHA's 2005 report, "The Status of Women in the Historical Profession," attests to this phenomenon. One of the issues not discussed in the AHA's report, however, is the tendency of some women in history to retire before their male colleagues. According to the 2003 National

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-22736611649449569802008-03-03T22:10:00.001-07:002008-03-03T22:50:59.799-07:00

Cross-posted at ProgressiveHistorians.The last time I wrote about this topic, and pointed out that women who had recently earned a bachelors in history were now making more money than their male counterparts, I received the following anonymous comment:This figure about post-BA salaries is very interesting, since this is NOT the case for women earning PhDs in history, who still make less than

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-80520880540860883502008-03-01T11:42:00.004-07:002008-03-01T12:53:01.664-07:00

Have you seen the recent report of Robert Cherny, the outgoing Treasurer of the OAH (hat tip to History News Network)? He notes that both OAH investments and membership have been down recently. I have not heard the same about the AHA. This got me wondering what a comparison of AHA and OAH finances would reveal. I did some searching online and came up with the following (the AHA FY 2007 fiscal

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-35522663902680750592008-02-06T13:47:00.000-07:002008-02-06T14:29:18.212-07:00

History is mostly a male major at the undergraduate level. And this is happening while college campuses across the nation are witnessing declining male enrollments. If you don't believe me about the resilience of the male history major, check out this graph I put together with 2002-2005 data from nearly a thousand different colleges, which was collected by the Baccalaureate and Beyond

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-48663278828881697492008-02-04T14:14:00.000-07:002008-02-04T14:47:48.827-07:00

One of the community colleges where I have been teaching is thinking of changing textbooks for the American history survey. Since I have been teaching the second half of the survey for them, I am interested in editions that contain fewer pages and cost less money. So I did a little digging and came up with the following list of titles, sorted by Amazon ranking:Here are a few questions I am

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-33285102506816617232008-01-29T12:29:00.000-07:002008-01-29T13:32:12.156-07:00

Robert B. Townsend, in his latest Perspectives article, surveyed the latest data on history PhDs earned in 2006 and job ads in Perspectives during 2007. He offered what sounded like encouraging news when he reported that "the number of openings in Asian and African history were higher than the number of new degrees, and the listings for Latin American history were near parity." I thought

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-42841433420442002262008-01-25T15:20:00.000-07:002008-01-25T16:05:55.967-07:00

As I have become more acquainted with the AHA over the last year, I have become increasingly convinced that attacks on the AHA are largely misguided. This is the largest problem that I have with the Bowen article. Bowen seems to assume that the AHA is a gerontocracy with entrenched interests that cares little, if any, for the needs and concerns of young and untenured people in the profession.

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-68295264655461082008-01-18T15:03:00.000-07:002008-01-18T15:17:00.476-07:00

Did you know that only a fourth of the jobs listed in Perspectives, and only about 14 percent of the history job searches advertised on H-Net, make use of the AHA's Job Register facilities for interviews? If you would like to see some discussion of this issue, check out this blog post.If you are interested in a blog post that critiques the Bowen article and recommends the AHA identify

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-52506414033327014412008-01-17T18:15:00.000-07:002008-01-17T18:28:44.676-07:00

Many of you have seen by now the article by Michael Bowen that criticized the AHA for not doing enough to help job seekers.I have a few ideas for how the AHA could respond to Bowen's criticisms. The AHA could carry out a more complete census by making it easier for departments to afford a listing in the AHA Directory. Right now a history department at a four-year school has to pay $208 to join

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-40812324648769095912008-01-03T21:59:00.000-07:002008-01-03T23:47:25.384-07:00

Have you seen the AHA's newly-released job market report? It has already been covered in the media here and here. I want to congratulate Rob Townsend for getting this out in advance of the AHA convention. I think it has some really encouraging data that all historians should be aware of. Still, I found some areas where I disagreed. Below you will find my take on the job market news.Myth:

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-30501343935540877732008-01-01T10:53:00.000-07:002008-01-01T11:34:43.027-07:00

In the summer of 2007, I wrote a post that raised some concerns about the sale of ABC-CLIO's America: History & Life (AHL) database to EBSCO. Here is how I concluded that post:I would also like to know whether EBSCO plans to continue creating abstracts for every history journal article, as ABC-CLIO did for decades, or whether EBSCO will eliminate this feature in one of its cost-cutting moves. I

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-90328807076952261542007-12-22T10:28:00.000-07:002007-12-22T11:00:47.114-07:00

Did you know that interviews for faculty positions in U.S. history happen at the OAH? I had never heard of this until I clicked on a job listing in my e-mail inbox this morning. So I did a little digging in H-Net to see how common this was. Here is a list of the job postings I found there since January 2000:Arkansas State University - Open Rank, Public History"The Department hopes to conduct

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1877590555443041601.post-76411406993223735462007-12-21T16:49:00.000-07:002007-12-21T18:48:10.458-07:00

Have you ever wondered about the pecking order when it comes to university presses? What counts as a best seller for university presses? These questions have crossed my mind, but I have never seen a study that answers them. The fact that sales data for books is unusually difficult to obtain hasn't made it any easier to analyze these kinds of patterns and trends. Today I had an idea for

PhDinHistoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15247074542288118525noreply@blogger.com7