Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Daniel Fidel Ferrer's avatar
  2. Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow's avatar
  3. Panu Raatikainen's avatar
  4. Jason Stanley's avatar
  5. Daniel Greco's avatar
  6. Nobody's avatar
  7. Roger of Invisible America's avatar

Jobs for History PhDs down 7% this year, after two years of increases

Brian Leiter

IHE has details on History and other academic job markets.  I've never understood why the APA doesn't collect this data in as timely a way.

ADDENDUM:  This chart, showing the number of jobs in a sub-field and the number of new PhDs in that sub-field is striking:

Entry-Level History Positions vs. Specialties of New  Ph.D.s

Field Number of Openings Number of New Ph.D.s
North America 199 441
Europe 129 187
Asia 110 73
Latin America 51 64
Middle East 41 60
Africa 40 38

 

Is there any sub-field of philosophy where there are more jobs than new PhDs?  I'm skeptical there is, but invite data from readers in the comments.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

One response to “Jobs for History PhDs down 7% this year, after two years of increases”

  1. Vargas. Manuel Vargas.

    In some years the answer is yes, and the area is Latin American philosophy. Very few Ph.D. programs have anyone who specializes in this area, but teaching-focused institutions in the southwest of the U.S. have tended to have some interest in hiring faculty who can teach Latin American philosophy. It has been a few years since I looked carefully at this issue, but there were several years in the early to mid 2000 in which there were clearly more jobs in Latin American philosophy in the U.S. than there were new Ph.Ds from Gourmet Report-ranked programs capable of teaching in this area. I should note, though, that in many cases, those jobs would be listed as open area with an AOC in Latin American (or sometimes, other non-"Western" philosophy), and of course, the jobs aren't always in the SW of the US.

    Given the fact of small numbers, a Ph.D. program could presumably get a non-trivial uptick In placement rate of their Ph.Ds if they could hire a faculty member whose teaching included such a field, with the thought that graduate students could get at least TA undergrad courses, and consequently acquire at least AOC competence to teach in that area. I am not aware of any institution that has tried to do this, however.

    Reply

Designed with WordPress